The dreaded homework!

Oh no, you have all my sympathies.

I confessed to the senco 'I can't do this'. Reading, yes....but not much else. Daily diary in the summer hols had me sweating, his other homework was to collect 5 postcards for geography, doable too. Yesterday he informs me that 'we are part of er up' lol.

Oh and mathletics we can do too.

I'm not doing anything else! Not because I'm lazy or don't care, and I do feel bad not pushing it, but life is stressful enough!

Can you buy a set of encyclopaedias? Would he find that easier to research?

(I guess I'm lucky snooz is really not very bothered about appearance or content of his homework)

Thanks, Donatella. That was one of the sites I found in my searching, but unfortunately it's only Primary so didn't have roundheads and cavaliers.

Shakespeare in Welsh... Hmmm. I fod, neu beidio â bod yn (To be or not to be). I think the scansion has lost a little in translation.

Children's non fiction and reference books are definitely more accessible. With a bit of notice for homework a trip to library might reap dividends especially if Sprat does the home work at the library. And asking the librarian for help finding the info is the way to go.

Alternatively you can access some resources from home, eg locally we have access to reference books through the library website. Just type in library card number and get 'Brittanica Library Junior'

Sprat could also have his own homework favourites folders with good websites.

Also is there some sort of guidance about how long homework is supposed to take? Many an evening/weekend ruined by homework here in the past :-(

Sympathy sympathy sympathy. Great text book idea from fruitcake. Has Sprat had an SpLD or Ed Psych assessment?? Does he have an IEP? I know there is no obligation under the new system to do IEPs but our school are carrying on with that in the absence of anything else. I know attitude to homework has been a key driver in our search for a secondary school for Jealous Dog (now year 6.) We are only considering schools where JD would be allowed to focus homework on key subjects only in year 7 and where they understand that in light of his dyslexia homework needs to be focused and supportive. I would meet with the Head of Year and the Head of Learning Support and see if you can make a joint plan so homework can be:

Focused around a) areas where he struggles and needs to catch up b) differentiated so that it reflects what he is capable of now and genuinely builds on what he (not the average student) will have learnt securely in class c) allows him to explore further things that he loves

Also get an agreement that research materials should be more focused for Sprat i.e. suggested websites/books from the library.

Good luck, you do an amazing job and really should be properly supported not "put upon"

Tonight we have a worksheet on times tables. Hurricane can't yet add 5+4 without a lot of thought, use of fingers and the odd wild guess thrown in. Oh yes he's learnt that 9 x 10 = 90 but when I asked him what it actually meant he had no idea that it represented 9 groups of ten objects being counted up all together!

Having had an understanding teacher last year who didn't even send homework home but used some of his 1:1 time to complete it in school, it came as a shock today to have the teacher march out to me on the playground to tell me 'Hurricane wants to do his homework, he's told his LSA. He's perfectly capable of doing it so I expect it handed in next Monday'. I replied that we would do our best but that given we rarely actually managed to read at home (something he loves) because of behaviour after school, it may not be possible and asked if the practice from last year could continue. Her response: 'No it's not fair to do it at school (fair to who exactly?) and if it's not done then he'll miss Golden Time'. Hmmm.

I emailed his teacher to ask whether they'd been given detailed instructions on how to find stuff on the Internet. Got a terse reply to say that yes, the school did take Internet security seriously and that they had worked on using the net for education. And that they'd reviewed what had been set for the history homework and it seemed fine, and that Sprat had produced good work.

I've replied with details of how long it took us and the stress that it caused. I've asked again for details of whether they've been guided towards specific sites or forms of words. And I set the tutor a challenge to try to find age-appropriate information within a couple of minutes.

Be interesting to see the response...

AS has been at a small independent school which has traditionally given very little homework apart from read read read. For this I have been very thankful as I fully remember the battles even at year 4 in the state system – basically my advice is if it becomes a battle don’t do it – as an adoptive parent you have bigger issues to deal with. Education can wait, growing up and feeling safe and secure can’t wait…..

AS now at business end of schooling, GCSE’s this year and he wants to do well but he does really struggle – I have just spent the last 30 minutes trawling the internet for past questions on his science topic and we will sit down and do them together tonight – trying to do this sort of thing at age 11 would have been a no no.

Corkwing I totally get your frustrations with searching the internet on a particular topic – lazy lazy teaching in my opinion. Start them off by giving three questions on the topic to find answers to and then over time get them to come up with the questions – the internet is too big for an 11 year old to use sensibly.

I remember AD cutting and pasting reams of stuff saying she had written it – well what is a diaper then? Once she got a really got grade for a poem, I being suspicious put the first line into google – guess what?!!

Battle on!
Mooster x

What are signing symbols Serrakunda? And what are " enrichments" cowgirrl ? If we have those here, they either dont mention those names or call them something else?
we too used to have the " not challenging enoigh" problem, though its better now with the more rigorous routine at his new school, but i hate vague questions as i cant help with what is wanted plus the kids get frustrated when they cant find info fast enoigh. And i really hate this, " research the topic on the internet" stuff, that basically means " google it" as far as the kids are concerned. Also, the kids seem to be picking up the idea that the internet is the only fount of knowledge and that libraries are irrelevant , and they are not having this corrected by the teachers( i had an interesting discussion with one of mt scouts about this last week. - his idea of using a different source was to use Bing instead of Google)
when i worked at the university the students were taught about specifically scholarly sites and things like google scholar which produces references to accetable rkesearch that is deemed accepable, but for schoolchildren these are sometimes too advanced and they are far better ( info more reliable) using books, plus it stops them just cutting and pasting, which is a total no no at university and can get them into serious trouble there. Trouble is kids say the teacher has often spefically told them to use the internet, it took is a while to explain to our boys that as lomg as you quote yoir research source, a book is usually acceptable and indeed the info there is likely to be more original than what your classmates produce.
Corkwing , i recognise the perfectionism and impatience combination, ny ds2 is like that. If he cant do the work he goes into meltdown and you cant continue the homework till he has calmed down. Maths is our main issue, used to love it, but he missed a lot last year, thanks to his weekly therapy being scheduled at maths time ) and it tooks two terms before the teacher realised !!! ( can i borrow some of your alpha numeric characters Corkwing, i have run out) when he started saying he was rubbish at maths because he had missed so much.now he gets so stressed that 10 minutes worth of maths can take half an hour or more. He is catching up and getting better but itt is stressful still at times.
One thing that really helped me with numbers as a child was those coloured wooden blocks of number lenghts that the kids can play with. it helped me get a sense of tens and units. My son was also helped by doing a number chart , 1 to 100 in rows of ten. If they do it themselves they can see where the groupings are. Kumon class and practise also gave my older son some confidence at maths as they start them well beck, at stuff they know, and progress steadily at the childs pace, but 10 mins each day, no more.
He was catching up well with that till his cleverclogs brother arrived and he felt embarrassed to go.

My children's secondary school has a homework club after school once or twice a week. Just occasionally, my DD used it.
Now I discover that there is another after school session for 'scholars' - the youngsters with Pupil Premium, or PP+.
DS actually thinks his 1:1 after school is worth having, as he's in GCSE year.

However, for most of their lives with us, they have been too tired to use an after school club for homework.
Like the rest of you, we had to rely on whatever half baked instructions had been written in the homework planner.
In vain, we tried to get teachers to explain to DD exactly what the homework involved.
Eventually, she learned to ask for herself. And learned to go and improve on course work that could be shone up.
It was a very long, painful path.
DS rings his mates up, and a lowest common denominator homework often emerged.

I recently discovered this through my Open University studies. Google has an 'Advanced Search' option that narrows things down. Just type in 'Advanced Search' then click on it. You then type in what you are looking for such as 'roundheads and cavaliers'.   I found a site specifically for kids. You can also select images and videos from the top ribbon. Hope that helps.

Lily x

Sooz, you've made Tokoloshe speechless. That's when you know it must be bad!

Did he choose it because he preferred the colour? That's what kipper would do!