Your opinion on my family's homework policy

[Anonymous]

OP,

Good for you for having the courage to stand up against cookie-cutter school policies, and also for raising such responsible kids!

Not every child would have had the wherewithal to calculate exactly when to do his homework... they would just have blown off everything.

And as you said, be prepared to crack down immediately if grades dip or if they get to a point where they need a teacher's recommendation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the issue is that you are aetting the bar too low for them. If you do the minimum amount of work necessary you will be fine. Why not push them so they see that hard work pays off rather than sometimes when you do less work you slip by?

I find the challenge to these kids intriguing. They will be the ones to question why we need to call the "IT help desk" and log a ticket and then open a separate ticket through the "IT desktop services" and then start a workflow process on the "IT troubleshoot website" and then create a new password that is 10 characters long with at least one capital letter, one number and one symbol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Congrats, they think rules don't apply to them. Good luck getting them to pay their taxes.

This makes no sense. The kids did the work they needed to do for reports and projects. They just didn't do the mindless repetitive assignments.

Part of the point of the "mindless repetitive assignments" is to reiterate what is learned in the class room. You can't learn everything through "projects".

[Anonymous]

Maybe you should seek out a montessori program as it seems like a better more progressive fit for you.

[Anonymous]

I think it's fine as long as they are not aiming for top colleges. If they don't know how to study hard, they're going to be sorely disappointed.

[Anonymous]

You're teaching them to question authority and take control of their education. Those are very good things.

I hated the busywork homework that my school expected us to assign. I wished more parents were as against homework for the sake of homework (not reading a novel we were studying, working on a long-term project, etc.) as I was.

--yet another teacher

[Anonymous]

My 4th grader had a 2hr assignment given on Halloween night.

The paper was orange! And had pictures of pumpkins on! What fun!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 4th grader had a 2hr assignment given on Halloween night.

The paper was orange! And had pictures of pumpkins on! What fun!

It took your child 2 hours to complete a worksheet?

Was this before or after trick-o-treating?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have a similar policy.

For K-1st grade they only do the amount of homework they want to do.

I am against mindless homework for lower grades. This year my kindergartner's teacher sent home packets of 5-10 pages each week, plus five spelling words to write x3 in additoon to the regular packet that the other K classes received. We did maybe 3/4 of the assigned packet and less than half of the supplementals. After full day K my kid was worn out. I think K-1st is mostly about learning to love learning, and 30-60 minutes of homework/night for a five or six year old does not accomplish this and actually does quite the opposite.

In 2nd-5th the kods get their homework done. I think homework at this age teaches organization and study skills more than anything.

Sixth and up, the homework is 100% on them. I give a generic "get your homework done" reminder, but whether or not they actually do it is up to them. I don't get involved unless the grades go down.

I agree that 30-60 minutes of homework a night is insane for a 5-6 yo. My kindergartener had nightly homework but it literally took her two minutes to do it, so she did it. I saw it as more practice - practice writing the date, practice reading the directions, etc. If her homework took more than 5-10 minutes to do, I would definitely have more of a problem with it.

[Anonymous]

Op is talking about middle and high schoolers...not 5 year olds or 4th graders as PPS are trying to compare to.

[Anonymous]

What is a flipped classroom?

[Anonymous]

OP ~ I would watch-out for high school. You could be caught by surprise. Grading is very subjective, in other than Math/Science. Get on the bad-side of a teacher and you're toast. Teachers will take it out on the student.

And you will have to get use to the possibility of "C's" for a decent/good student - "C's" are pretty standard especially in AP classes. FCPS high schools could differ from one another. I always suspected that the grade distributions were vastly different from high school to high school - for no good reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it's fine as long as they are not aiming for top colleges. If they don't know how to study hard, they're going to be sorely disappointed.

no problem, if they're happy with B's they are not going to a top college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is a flipped classroom?

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is a flipped classroom?

+1

In essence, “flipping the classroom” means that students gain first exposure to new material outside of class, usually via reading or lecture videos, and then use class time to do the harder work of assimilating that knowledge, perhaps through problem-solving, discussion, or debates.

http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/flipping-the-classroom/