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[quote=Anonymous]OP here. Reflecting on the amount of work they get, somehow i'm quite amazed at the amount of time it takes. Writing down some words in alphabetical order should really be a snap -- but it is not. And if there are mistakes in her independent work during after-care, then we have the uphill battle of having to erase and fix. Somehow, that review process is fraught with tears and emotions. Similarly, the reading assignment should be a breeze for a child who has consistently read for meaning since the early days of K. Yet extracting fully formed sentences, written in a good handwriting and pin-pointing the exact paragraph that supports the argument seems like a much bigger task. Math is hit or miss -- easy-breezy on some days, and a bear on others. No relation to the real difficulty of the assignment.

I guess I'm not as stumped by the sheer amount of work. But I feel like my child should not have such a difficult time with it. I also feel that if they had started with some of the word study in the early years, when they were so open to understanding how to read the harder words, they would have achieved a very similar result, without the struggle to memorize. They had to memorize sight words before, now they memorize spelling lists. Nowhere have I seen nary an explanation of how these letters work. My kid has a better memory than most, and she's capable of learning this way, but when reliance on memory is the name of the game, it stunts her flexible thinking in so many other areas. And it takes o much more time...

Example: they worked on long, multi-digit multiplications. Double-digit, to be precise. She got it and it was easy. Then they introduced the concept of multiplying numbers ending in many 0-s. She got that. But when asked to do that in a combined worksheet, she ended up combining the two strategies to get a completely wrong result. These are the nuances that seem to get lost in the classroom, while everyone is bent on memorizing strategies. The children seem to be expected to magically understand when to use one strategy vs another -- and if they don't, I hear either the "don't worry, it will come year", or "we expect our inquisitive children to become experts at choosing the right strategy. No choice is really wrong. They should be able to explain. Show your work" All these edicts simply tell me there is no direction provided to children on how to think about math, even though they are expected to do it.

The PT conferences are coming, and I would like to have an intelligent solution by then, without asking for a smaller homework or glossing over the poor quality of her work. On one hand, thank you forl letting me vent. On the other one, if anyone has a constructive idea, I'm all eyes. Right now, I feel like my child is floundering, despite working really hard.[/quote]

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