School homework has 'no real benefit'

mariaalice

Just though of something.....a reward always works better that a punishment....! if your child is constantly not bringing home the right book or copy book...what you could do is first approach the teacher you ask the teacher to check that the child had the right book/copybook and to get to the child to mark it in their homework journal..... that gets over the problem of forgetting the correct book..then you set up a reward chart with your child....every day your child brings home the correct book and they do their homework without tantrum or tears they get a star sticker to put on their chart and when they have say 5 stickers they get to go to say smiths toy shop and get a small reward...for this to work the parent and teachers need to work together and you need to be consistent and stick to it along with lots of praise and encouragement.

Fittle

Funny you say that marialice - I had another chat with teacher last week, and her first reaction was 'don't punish the negative, reward the positive'. He had once again forgotten 2 books and I hadn't allowed him go football training....

Anyway, if I didn't 'punish' that, I don't know what else I could have done??? While I get this whole concept of only rewarding good behaviour, what do you do when he consistently forgets books...?

So I found a very old calendar last night and have told him this morning that he'll get a star for every day he writes down the correct homework AND brings the correct books home....5 stars and he gets a 'reward'. The little chancer asked can his reward this saturday be a Real Madrid jersey....:rolleyes: (I was thinking more like a Mars Bar....)

Chaotic_Forces

Fittle wrote: »

Funny you say that marialice - I had another chat with teacher last week, and her first reaction was 'don't punish the negative, reward the positive'. He had once again forgotten 2 books and I hadn't allowed him go football training....

Anyway, if I didn't 'punish' that, I don't know what else I could have done??? While I get this whole concept of only rewarding good behaviour, what do you do when he consistently forgets books...?

So I found a very old calendar last night and have told him this morning that he'll get a star for every day he writes down the correct homework AND brings the correct books home....5 stars and he gets a 'reward'. The little chancer asked can his reward this saturday be a Real Madrid jersey....:rolleyes: (I was thinking more like a Mars Bar....)

It's not laziness or him doing it on purpose I don't think.
You're sure other students have difficulty doing the same as him? IF so, it seems like the teacher could be at more fault than the kids.

Nevyn

I've had this one over and over and over and even with my son's sna giving a hand when he was in primary school, and I am seeing the same thing with my daugther the homework is only put up on the board 10 mins before the end of the school day.

Fittle

Yes, there are other kids with exactly the same issue. Some of the parents chat about it in school yard every monring - and the teacher herself told me he is one of ten boys with this issue since 1st Sept.

I agree thaed...why she can't put the homework on the board at 2pm is anyones guess Any teachers reading this and could clarify?

Chaotic_Forces

Fittle wrote: »

Yes, there are other kids with exactly the same issue. Some of the parents chat about it in school yard every monring - and the teacher herself told me he is one of ten boys with this issue since 1st Sept.

I agree thaed...why she can't put the homework on the board at 2pm is anyones guess Any teachers reading this and could clarify?

So you have 9 other kids and not one parent has suggested you band together and talk to the headmaster/headmistress about it?

Fittle

The teacher didn't identify the kids to me, so I don't know what ten kids they are. There are four of us who have spoken to the teacher seperately about this. We had a very difficult year with a dreadful teacher last year, and we have agreed that we would give them until halloween to settle in (seriously, you've no idea of the chaos last year).

And having said all of the above - he is getting a new teacher next monday because the one he got on 1st september is going on maternity leave....so more disruption ensues!!

Chaotic_Forces

Fittle wrote: »

The teacher didn't identify the kids to me, so I don't know what ten kids they are. There are four of us who have spoken to the teacher seperately about this. We had a very difficult year with a dreadful teacher last year, and we have agreed that we would give them until halloween to settle in (seriously, you've no idea of the chaos last year).

And having said all of the above - he is getting a new teacher next monday because the one he got on 1st september is going on maternity leave....so more disruption ensues!!

TBH; when I was in 3rd class my "teacher" took about 7 months off at least...

Was the wife of the headmaster and none of us really cared; she was well known as someone who was happy dragging people (children) out of the seats, pushing them and dealing out some very interesting punishments. Personal favourite was getting thrown out for losing some cards from a game; for two weeks I actually got a better education than I would have from her.

Point is; you don't know that this isn't a good thing. You could just ask your son if he knows who else has problems writing it down; then find out who the parents are and talk as a group. One voice heard ten times isn't as strong as ten voices at once.

JimiTime

The biggest problem IMO with peoples view on children is the approach, 'one size fits all'.

This relates to parenting, education, discipline etc. There are certain principals, but different children require different approaches. Schools, IMO, are very poor at 'really' educating our children. In many ways I think its because it must aply a one size fits all approach, given that it can't give one on one to every single kid. In a similar manner, 'Homework' is too generic a term. You can get beneficial homework and homework thats not beneficial. Homework should be where you practice what you learned in school. Much like a footballer, who learns a new skill must practice that skill away from the coaches glare if he is to master it.

One things for sure though, as long as school is a means to measure our children rather than a place of education, it will always be flawed.

metrovelvet

It's still too based on an institutionalised model of education imo.

Its the beginning of policing and controlling the body. Sit down sit down sit down and be quiet.

If I hear CUNAS coming home to my house I will vomit all over the note I send back into the teacher.

di11on

Very interesting thread.

My first thoughts are that it is impossible to make generalisations like this when it comes to homework. I really can't understand how general comments like: "Homework has no real benefit" or "Doesn't reinforce learning" can be made. It's like saying that working isn't good for learning! Completely meaningless... what work, and what learning? How... why... what????

Different aspects of learning need different learning methods. Something like spellings and tables. Surely it's not worthwhile spending valuable class time reaming of spellings and tables? However, reaming off is what needs to be done sometimes, for pure memory based things like this and perhaps doing this at home is more efficient?

Everything needs to be put in context. I'm all for looking at all aspects of homework to see where it adds value and where it doesn't, but it's totally impossible to make blanket statements like it is or it isn't useful.

I completely agree with a previous poster about sitting down and working out problems for yourself. How is this to be done without homework? You learn the theory and methods in class and then you put into practice what you learned at home. I think some degree of homework will always be necessary, but there may be aspects to it that aren't beneficial.

Another dimension to all this is that the benefits aren't always obvious. It seemed my daughter spent her first year of school colouring in. However, the hand muscles need to be developed for hand writing. This can't all be done in class.

Finally, while family time can be scarce and even though homework can be a big cause of stress, surely there's the potential for it to be the opposite too. It's easy to take a back seat and leave all the teaching to the teachers, but surely it's good if we're involved in our children's education too? Our kids need to know that what they learn and do in school is of tremendous value to them and by spending time with them at home, we reinforce this message. We're telling them it's important to put the time in, we value it and we're there to support them doing it.

I remember bringing my Irish homework home and having difficulty. My dad would just go off on a rant about how useless and pointless learning Irish was. You can imagine the negative impact that had on my morale and resolve to learn Irish. It would have been far better if he helped me. Then I would have believed it was important and would have done better.

My 2 euro cent.

iguana

di11on wrote: »

Different aspects of learning need different learning methods. Something like spellings and tables. Surely it's not worthwhile spending valuable class time reaming of spellings and tables? However, reaming off is what needs to be done sometimes, for pure memory based things like this and perhaps doing this at home is more efficient?

Except that kind of learning is not necessary. Rote learning is never done in Montessori schools yet in general children in those schools have higher standards of literacy and mathematics than their peers. Our brains are designed to learn by osmosis. It isn't necessarily the easiest route, because it will require a massive overhaul of the current educational standards, but sparking a child's interest in a subject is the best way to teach them.

Ickle Magoo

Exactly, as an adult educator we constantly use methods of teaching that haven't been used in schools purely because they didn't work the first time/have negative associations and there are some astonishing results to be had from mixing up learning styles and trying to make learning fun and interesting. Learning by rote has to be one of the most boring, unimaginative and lazy ways to teach - and for those without good memory and recall, completely useless to boot.

di11on

iguana wrote: »

Except that kind of learning is not necessary. Rote learning is never done in Montessori schools yet in general children in those schools have higher standards of literacy and mathematics than their peers. Our brains are designed to learn by osmosis. It isn't necessarily the easiest route, because it will require a massive overhaul of the current educational standards, but sparking a child's interest in a subject is the best way to teach them.

OK, bad example perhaps. My point is that there is stuff to be worked through at home that isn't necessarily appropriate and/or efficient for the classroom. Surely a child needs time to work through things by themselves. Maths problems, for example.

Chaotic_Forces

di11on wrote: »

OK, bad example perhaps. My point is that there is stuff to be worked through at home that isn't necessarily appropriate and/or efficient for the classroom. Surely a child needs time to work through things by themselves. Maths problems, for example.

Some homework is useful. But being told to learn stuff for the sake of just repeating it and then never needing it is a horrible idea.

As for maths problems, if it was anything like my school "just look at the examples in the book"...

Ickle Magoo

Who makes sure a child does work through a maths problem at home though? That's why I think homework has no intrinsic value, it's only as good as the students home-life allows. What is of immeasurable benefit to school children is interested and able parents - without that you could give them five hours of homework every night and double at weekends and for the majority it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.

metrovelvet

Ickle Magoo wrote: »

Who makes sure a child does work through a maths problem at home though? That's why I think homework has no intrinsic value, it's only as good as the students home-life allows. What is of immeasurable benefit to school children is interested and able parents - without that you could give them five hours of homework every night and double at weekends and for the majority it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.

Once I hit secondary school math homework made a difference. I was definitley much more with it when I had done my homework. I was also in honours math where they cram four years of math into two, so you had to keep up and it was easy to get lost.

However, in my secondary school, if you didn't do your homework you had to stay afterwards and do it. But we also had space to do it during lunch or a midday studyhall in addition to lunch in which older students or teachers were on hand to tutor.

littlebug

I haven't reached the phase of so much homework it's problematic yet so I can only reply to this from my own limited experience.

Junior/ senior infants - homework= pointless but what I think has worked well is a shared reading scheme they had (last year-hasn't happened yet this year). They got a different book home every week so it gave the children of higher ability something different and more interesting to read and extra parent/ child book time for those with lower reading ability. The option for more than one a week would have been better. The generic colouring/ tracing homework at that age is a waste of time in my experience.

First/ second class- my eldest needs a bit more input with maths and with that little bit of extra time she is keeping up ok so that's where the bulk of our homework time is spent.

To be honest I don't bother with their reading homework as they both read well. Maybe once a week I'll check in with the other stuff to make sure we're on top of things. It's maybe not the best approach or example to them but at the minute we get away with 15-30 mins so while I can avoid 1hr + homework sessions I will. I find concentration diminshes after 20 minutes and that's at maybe 4pm. If we're doing homework at 6pm it could take twice as long.
Sometimes they ask me to do extra "home homework" with them on things they want to learn about so an hour spent on that maybe twice a week is more worthwhile than re-reading stuff they can already read.
I do know parents whose children are struggling more with the work and they're already spending an hour at homework in second class

I don't think school/ teaching methods are all bad but obviously don't work for all children and that's where the problem lies, in the lack of flexibility in finding ways that work for individuals where the mainstream approach isn't working.

MissHoneyBun

Homework is a fundamental part of consolidating knowledge that is new to the child. It also provides the child with an opportunity to apply that knowledge in a practical capacity, independently and without the aid of the teacher and outside of the school context where the majority of their lives will be spent and where that knowledge is most acutely needed.

Ickle Magoo

metrovelvet wrote: »

Once I hit secondary school math homework made a difference. I was definitley much more with it when I had done my homework. I was also in honours math where they cram four years of math into two, so you had to keep up and it was easy to get lost.

However, in my secondary school, if you didn't do your homework you had to stay afterwards and do it. But we also had space to do it during lunch or a midday studyhall in addition to lunch in which older students or teachers were on hand to tutor.

I think once you have the building blocks then some degree of repeat work is going to make some difference, whether that be in the classroom or not - the issue is whether "homework" in general has any real benefit and I think once you have to start hanging caveats off it; like having other students/teachers on hand to help, having dedicated parents who can put the time and effort into making sure homework is done, etc, etc - then it's clear it's not the homework that is beneficial - it's the time and effort spent with adequately educated parents, older students or teachers in more of a one-to-one/Q & A situation. Which highlights exactly why the liberal-learning style that most schools favour fails so miserably.

MissHoneyBun

Ickle Magoo wrote: »

highlights exactly why the liberal-learning style that most schools favour fails so miserably.

I'm interested to hear you outline what this 'liberal-learning style' that schools are failing at is?

Ickle Magoo

Google ->

Edited to add: The well documented (NALA, D of Ed, UN, etc) and inarguable failure would be the 1 in 4 of the population between 14 & 64 who reportedly have literacy and numeracy issues and the horrendous 1 in 3 children from disadvantaged areas with serious literacy issues. If those stats are considered a well-worked success then I'm a monkeys uncle.

metrovelvet

Ickle Magoo wrote: »

I think once you have the building blocks then some degree of repeat work is going to make some difference, whether that be in the classroom or not - the issue is whether "homework" in general has any real benefit and I think once you have to start hanging caveats off it; like having other students/teachers on hand to help, having dedicated parents who can put the time and effort into making sure homework is done, etc, etc - then it's clear it's not the homework that is beneficial - it's the time and effort spent with adequately educated parents, older students or teachers in more of a one-to-one/Q & A situation. Which highlights exactly why the liberal-learning style that most schools favour fails so miserably.

I half agree with you. I think too often parents cop out by this argument.

They are also responsible for their children's learning. As it happens I didn't get much help at him with homework. I did most of it myself, and often was flaky enough to forget to bring it into school.

However, a genuine interest in curiosity and learning was fostered by both of my parents. I never went without books to read or science magazines, or trips to museums, etc etc. Learning was very much alive in the house and in the family. Dinner time you might here discussions about ancient Rome or Shakespeare or another topic of interest. And that is what I mean by my family back up. Homework, NEVER got help with that.

Nevyn

My kids try and get me to do the work for them, or else I am re explaining concepts which they have not grasped as no time as been spent explaining why they are doing what they are doing so they can understand what a comon denominator is and why you have to find it, or else I am sitting there trying to supervise and they use it as an excuse to talk and get distracted.

I have tried being in the room and doing other things so I am not directly supervising cos they should be able to get home work done with out me standing over them and that doesn't even work.

and when you have a kid who has ASD and failing to understand the maths or how to tackle a problem impacts on his self esteme and he can get so wond up that he starts hitting himself in the head and calling himself stupid (which he's not given his placement on the precentile charts) and the knock on effect that has on his sister and home work taking less then an hour with no tears can be a rarity some weeks, it makes us all weary
and after several years sick of it.

Given a problem with a real world concept to hang off and the kids are a lot more enuaged or something to research they are away and need little help or supervision but dry excerises out of the maths book or questions which need to be culled out of the text in the book( and if you correct the book or give a better or more detialed answer you get it wrong ) make us all loose the will to live.

If it wasn't for the merit system and the melt downs and tears when they don't get the certs with the rest of the class I would be sending them notes in to excuse them from home work at least once a week. Oh and both of them average 70% and above in all thier end of term tests.

MissHoneyBun

Ickle Magoo wrote: »

Google ->

How would google explain how you think your inference of something validates your point?

Seriously now, what's this 'liberal-learning style' that you think schools are 'failing miserably' at? And secondly, what's the correlation between that and your point regarding the merits/non-merits of homework?

lily09

Have just read through this thread and as a primary teacher have found it very interesting. I would be known in the school for not giving a large amount of homework. I dont think it has "no real benefit" but I also think that it is of limited value in the younger classes.
The main advantage to homework is that the parent is aware of the level that the child is at. I have 28 children in my seniors/first class. If i wanted to lsten to everyones reading every day, it would take an hour and that is simply not possible. If the parents listen to reading every night then I can check it once a week to pick up on problems. When we have finished a new maths concept the parents are sent home a work sheet to work with the children on so they know that there children are keeping up. I also feel that there is huge value in the C.A.P.E.R (CHildren and parents enjoying reading) also known as the Shared Reading Scheme.
Other than these few things I dont like giving homework at this age level.
PS to the poster whose child keeps forgetting books.. this is very stressful for you my advice would be to write and laminate the names of all the books and copies (or ask teacher to do this, i would have no problem) as the child is taking down their homework get them to stick a peice of blu tack beside each thing they need when they are packing their bag take the blu tack off as they are putting the books in they need. It will help train them. 3rd class is still very young and boys can be quite disorganised.

Chaotic_Forces

lily09 wrote: »

Have just read through this thread and as a primary teacher have found it very interesting.
When we have finished a new maths concept the parents are sent home a work sheet to work with the children on so they know that there children are keeping up.

You're a primary school teacher, really? :eek:

lily09

Yes I am watching Eastenders at the same time. Are you always this rude? I apologise for my spelling mistake. I wont bother posting my opinion in future.

Chaotic_Forces

lily09 wrote: »

Yes I am watching Eastenders at the same time. Are you always this rude? I apologise for my spelling mistake. I wont bother posting my opinion in future.

Considering that you're educating kids and teaching them to read/write I wouldn't call it rudeness; I'd call it worry.

Sorry if I offened you lily09.

Nevyn

Civil posting is expected on the forum, pedantry is not acceptable.
If anyone has any sort of an issue with a post report it do not get into a tit for tat on the thread.