HW has no benefit in elementary school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Salon article is a very biased reading of the expert opinion. This is straight from the mouth of Harris Cooper.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/12/12/stress-and-the-high-school-student/homeworks-diminishing-returns

He recommends a little homework to build study habit. My son is 1st grade and probably spend 5-10 minutes 4 night a week. I think this is correct amount for this age. Nothing before K. 10 minutes k-2 sounds about right.

And yet somehow, generations of kids (including probably most people on DCUM) managed to develop the skills to do homework when homework actually became important to learning round about jr high ... drilling a skill far before a child is ready for it or needs it does not necessarily help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PreK and kindergarten homework should be limited to things like:

Go outside and count how many bees and butterflies you see. Draw a picture of them pollinating a flower.

Count the numbers of windows and doors in your house. Which number is greater?

Have a grown up help you cook a recipe. How many fractions did you use when cooking? What other types of numbers did you need to know to make your recipe?

Read for 20 minutes and draw a picture about your favorite part of the story. Explain why you liked it, either by writing it and reading what you wrote to a grown up or telling them why you liked the story.
Etc.

Drill and kill worksheets should not be part of homework at that age.

I don't think worksheets have a place in PreK at all, and ideally not in K bit the kinds of assients you propose that not only take time but require parents to take kids to specific locations are absolutely unacceptable.

You don't have an outside? Windows? Doors? You don't cook dinner?

All of these ideas are perfect "homework" for early childhood education and take no extra effort or resources from parents (assuming you cook dinner in your home at least occasionally).

I do cook dinner for my family but there are also days when we have eaten dinner at my mother's nursing home, or we ate sandwiches in the car on the way to a sibling's soccer practice after daycare, or we ate dinner at "family night at church", or we cooked a recipe that has been in our family for generations and involves quantities like "a pinch" rather than a fraction.

The above homework assumes that every child has the same experiences -- like families that prepare dinner with recipes, or playing outside with a parent after school. In my experiences, the teachers who think it is OK to dictate to families like that post above, are the same teachers who use homework as a tool for deciding which families are "invested in their child's education" and for reducing their effort and sense of efficacy when I comes to helping kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love this! DS has a debate tournament coming up and homework should be banned in ES is one of the topics. Keep it coming, because I plan to pass along a link to this thread.

ha ha. A perennial discussion topic.
Here is some good information for your son: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar07/vol64/num06/The-Case-For-and-Against-Homework.aspx

Is another topic about students having cell phones at school? Just curious.

Lol. Close. Last debate tournament had a is texting evil topic. One of the teams stood up there and kept yelling "Texting is death!!!" (Because of car crashes caused by texting). And this time around, there is a the US should be required to protect extraterrestrial microbial life on other planets topic (I mean, wtf?). Watching middle schoolers debate is mostly about trying to keep a straight face when your child says something like, "my opponent says that that X causes teenage pregnancy. But judge, why is teenage pregnancy a bad thing? After all, the world needs new babies."

I’m not sure the microbial life topic is a good one for MS. But, it gave me a chuckle.
Debating is a great skill. It forces one to look at a topic from all perspectives. Homework is a great debate topic since there are positives and negatives on both sides. There are a lot of people who could benefit from looking at topics from multiple perspectives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Salon article is a very biased reading of the expert opinion. This is straight from the mouth of Harris Cooper.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/12/12/stress-and-the-high-school-student/homeworks-diminishing-returns

He recommends a little homework to build study habit. My son is 1st grade and probably spend 5-10 minutes 4 night a week. I think this is correct amount for this age. Nothing before K. 10 minutes k-2 sounds about right.

And yet somehow, generations of kids (including probably most people on DCUM) managed to develop the skills to do homework when homework actually became important to learning round about jr high ... drilling a skill far before a child is ready for it or needs it does not necessarily help.

It actually hurts. I agree with you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Salon article is a very biased reading of the expert opinion. This is straight from the mouth of Harris Cooper.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/12/12/stress-and-the-high-school-student/homeworks-diminishing-returns

He recommends a little homework to build study habit. My son is 1st grade and probably spend 5-10 minutes 4 night a week. I think this is correct amount for this age. Nothing before K. 10 minutes k-2 sounds about right.

And yet somehow, generations of kids (including probably most people on DCUM) managed to develop the skills to do homework when homework actually became important to learning round about jr high ... drilling a skill far before a child is ready for it or needs it does not necessarily help.

It actually hurts. I agree with you.

I agree as well. That is why this body of research is useless. Because many teachers do give inappropriate homework. But homework does not have to be inappropriate and could be at the child's level to reinforce learning and cultivate good study habit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PreK and kindergarten homework should be limited to things like:

Go outside and count how many bees and butterflies you see. Draw a picture of them pollinating a flower.

Count the numbers of windows and doors in your house. Which number is greater?

Have a grown up help you cook a recipe. How many fractions did you use when cooking? What other types of numbers did you need to know to make your recipe?

Read for 20 minutes and draw a picture about your favorite part of the story. Explain why you liked it, either by writing it and reading what you wrote to a grown up or telling them why you liked the story.
Etc.

Drill and kill worksheets should not be part of homework at that age.

I don't think worksheets have a place in PreK at all, and ideally not in K bit the kinds of assients you propose that not only take time but require parents to take kids to specific locations are absolutely unacceptable.

You don't have an outside? Windows? Doors? You don't cook dinner?

All of these ideas are perfect "homework" for early childhood education and take no extra effort or resources from parents (assuming you cook dinner in your home at least occasionally).

I do cook dinner for my family but there are also days when we have eaten dinner at my mother's nursing home, or we ate sandwiches in the car on the way to a sibling's soccer practice after daycare, or we ate dinner at "family night at church", or we cooked a recipe that has been in our family for generations and involves quantities like "a pinch" rather than a fraction.

The above homework assumes that every child has the same experiences -- like families that prepare dinner with recipes, or playing outside with a parent after school. In my experiences, the teachers who think it is OK to dictate to families like that post above, are the same teachers who use homework as a tool for deciding which families are "invested in their child's education" and for reducing their effort and sense of efficacy when I comes to helping kids.

I agree. I talk to my child about math a lot. But the times when we were required to go outside and count the number of red leaves, we made those up. I consider those bad homework. It is okay they do that at school. I would have hated those activities as a child but haven since given up on making learning math more abstract for my child at this stage. The constructivism agenda in education is too prevalent to battle.

[Anonymous]

Growing up, I rarely had homework in elementary school. If we had extra assignments I would try to finish them during the day. Occasionally I had a project or something lighter that would take 20 minutes or so. My parents, who were from another country, were always saying "where is your homework??" "where is your homework??" and I would say "I did it at school" or "I don't have any!" They could barely believe me.

I think this was perfect. I had a lot of time for play and being creative. I built cities out of legos, had dramas with my barbies. I got to play outside with neighborhood kids. I even wrote books to amuse myself. I was able to go to a top college and law school.

It's pretty clear that this homework thing is cyclical. People demand more homework for a few years, then there is a backlash, and then there is a backlash from no homework, and on and on. I wish people would just go with quantitative evidence, which shows that a ton of homework is not going to help elementary schoolers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love this! DS has a debate tournament coming up and homework should be banned in ES is one of the topics. Keep it coming, because I plan to pass along a link to this thread.

ha ha. A perennial discussion topic.
Here is some good information for your son: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar07/vol64/num06/The-Case-For-and-Against-Homework.aspx

Is another topic about students having cell phones at school? Just curious.

Lol. Close. Last debate tournament had a is texting evil topic. One of the teams stood up there and kept yelling "Texting is death!!!" (Because of car crashes caused by texting). And this time around, there is a the US should be required to protect extraterrestrial microbial life on other planets topic (I mean, wtf?). Watching middle schoolers debate is mostly about trying to keep a straight face when your child says something like, "my opponent says that that X causes teenage pregnancy. But judge, why is teenage pregnancy a bad thing? After all, the world needs new babies."

I’m not sure the microbial life topic is a good one for MS. But, it gave me a chuckle.
Debating is a great skill. It forces one to look at a topic from all perspectives. Homework is a great debate topic since there are positives and negatives on both sides. There are a lot of people who could benefit from looking at topics from multiple perspectives.

Debate is a great activity. I was iffy on it at first, but have been won over. Even if a middle school debate is the equivalent of a 4th grade strings concert to observe. Public speaking, poise, thinking on your feet, learning to construct and rebut arguments, working as a member of a team. There's a lot of good skills there. Which is why, back to the actual topic,it would be nice if more homework, even in middle to upper ES, involved things like preparing for a class debate on homework, or cell phones, or uniforms, rather than memorizing spelling lists. Some amount of really challenging substantive work doesn't bother me. Inane busywork drives me nuts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well if studying at home for the inevitable spelling test is a waste of time, I'd love to know how you otherwise go about doing well on it.

Studying at school.

not THAT is a total waste of class time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well if studying at home for the inevitable spelling test is a waste of time, I'd love to know how you otherwise go about doing well on it.

Studying at school.

not THAT is a total waste of class time.

Actually, spelling lists themselves are a total waste of time.
The supposed goal of spelling lists and spelling tests are to help kids learn to spell words correctly. Many do quite well for the spelling test itself. As a career teacher, I used to have kids do beautifully on their spelling tests only to continually misspell the words they supposedly “learned” during their writing. What I learned about teaching spelling is that words kids needed to learn were words they used repeatedly in their writing. So, students had different words they were learning. And, how did they learn them? By keeping these words in their hand made “dictionaries” and checking their own work. This required work on my part, but my students were excellent spellers and by the end of the year, they were able to write more quickly and with less effort because their writing vocabulary had grown. Word study is also beneficial to students - learning word patterns and such.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I disagree. Homework has some value, one of which is preparing the expectation to do homework. Also, especially in math it does help reinforce the concepts taught in class.

Homework is not "wrecking" schools -- such nonsense and hyperbole. I swear parents today want to coddle kids with their demands for four/five recess and less pressure. Good Lord, expect more from your children. They are capable and want to learn.

+1,000 kids don't learn anything from extra time for play or movement, Good Lord people!

Said no one with early childhood education education ever.

(Unless you were being sarcastic. In which case, hahaha!)

PP here, I was being snarky - the more play time & moving around the better!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Being a parent takes lots of extra effort. If you are not willing to put in the effort, why have kids? The things that you do while the kids are young, set the example they will live by. Learning should be both at home and at schools.

This is true, but what does this have to do with homework??

Anonymous wrote:
Schools cannot provide everything.

I don't see anyone saying they should! Please explain this remark -- what made you write it? Did you think someone wants school to 'provide everything'?

Helping your kids with homework is part of parenting. Most parents who complain about it do not want to sit down and help their kids. They'd prefer homework when the kids are older so they do not have to deal with it. That is lazy parenting.

Yes, lots of people expect the schools to provide everything.

why is it part of parenting? Did your parents sit and do homework with you? Mine didn't. It's ridiculous to give kids assignments that they can't do. My preschooler was asked to do a report at home for black history month, using two sources. He just learned to write his name legibly a few months ago. I didn't want to do it, not because I'm lazy, but because it's stupid and not helpful.

Mine absolutely did. When we were young we did our homework in the kitchen while my mother made dinner so she could answer questions. When we got older we did it in our rooms.
My dad read my reports and helped me with science projects until I was in HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If kids have zero homework until they begin middle school (or if their parents tell them, "Ignore the teachers and don't do what they ask"), they will be utterly slammed by the idea of required homework when they hit middle school. They need to learn that the expectation of doing regular homework is important -- and in MS and HS, homework assignments are part of the class grade. Doing the homework consistently and with real effort can help a kid's overall class grade, both because the assignments themselves get graded, and because they help the kid understand concepts that will turn up on tests and classroom assignments.

If kids don't learn how to deal with homework gradually as they move into older elementary grades, they will be overwhelmed in middle school.

Psssst. Middle school grades don't matter. You've been suckered into believing they do but they really don't. They disappear when your child goes to high school and no college admissions office will ever see them. A student in middle school can do only the helpful, meaningful work and be just fine skipping the rest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Salon article is a very biased reading of the expert opinion. This is straight from the mouth of Harris Cooper.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/12/12/stress-and-the-high-school-student/homeworks-diminishing-returns

He recommends a little homework to build study habit. My son is 1st grade and probably spend 5-10 minutes 4 night a week. I think this is correct amount for this age. Nothing before K. 10 minutes k-2 sounds about right.

And yet somehow, generations of kids (including probably most people on DCUM) managed to develop the skills to do homework when homework actually became important to learning round about jr high ... drilling a skill far before a child is ready for it or needs it does not necessarily help.

+1

You don't learn to do homework when it's appropriate by doing a bunch of it when it's not. I'm okay with sending a list of spelling words home each week on Monday to practice for a test on Friday. Or the multiplication tables. Or reading for 20 minutes a night. But worksheets for preschoolers? Stupid. I didn't have homework until third grade at the earliest, aside from little things like "look for three red things in your house" or whatever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I disagree. Homework has some value, one of which is preparing the expectation to do homework. Also, especially in math it does help reinforce the concepts taught in class.

Homework is not "wrecking" schools -- such nonsense and hyperbole. I swear parents today want to coddle kids with their demands for four/five recess and less pressure. Good Lord, expect more from your children. They are capable and want to learn.

+1,000 kids don't learn anything from extra time for play or movement, Good Lord people!

Said no one with early childhood education education ever.

(Unless you were being sarcastic. In which case, hahaha!)

PP here, I was being snarky - the more play time & moving around the better!

Yeah. It turns out that physical play and free exploration are critical for brain development. The idea that recess is a luxury is so incredibly messed up.