Newsflash. It's not all about you. If you haven't noticed we have a crisis in this country where parents are not involved. In order to raise children we need both parents and teachers involved in raising US children. Parents need to observe their children as well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher in Fairfax County. Homework up through grade 6 isn't supposed to be graded. Most teachers in my building assign very little if any hw. I don't see much purpose for assigning it.

I agree that if homework isn't graded there is no point in assigning it. In fact I think it can have a negative effect if it isn't corrected, because it can reinforce errors. Ideally, I think there should be homework that is corrected so that students misunderstandings can be caught early.

Homework is for practice and to allow time for research before classroom discussion. When did this become such an issue? Why don't you engage parents and other children with homework? Our teachers have the kids switch papers and grade each other. Doesn't take much time and allows the child to review the problems too. Ask parents to review the homework when it comes home if they can. Make them part of the education program.

Everything in bold can be done with class work. The students are structured for most of their 6 hour and 40 minute school day. I see no reason to assign homework on top of it.

I can observe the students working in class. I can't observe them when they are working at home.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher in Fairfax County. Homework up through grade 6 isn't supposed to be graded. Most teachers in my building assign very little if any hw. I don't see much purpose for assigning it.

I agree that if homework isn't graded there is no point in assigning it. In fact I think it can have a negative effect if it isn't corrected, because it can reinforce errors. Ideally, I think there should be homework that is corrected so that students misunderstandings can be caught early.

Homework is for practice and to allow time for research before classroom discussion. When did this become such an issue? Why don't you engage parents and other children with homework? Our teachers have the kids switch papers and grade each other. Doesn't take much time and allows the child to review the problems too. Ask parents to review the homework when it comes home if they can. Make them part of the education program.

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.

First of all, I don't think pre-K and K should have homework.

Secondly, I think these assignments are awful: What if a kid doesn't see an bees or butterflies? What if the kid is scared of bees and butterflies?

Windows and doors? My kid would have stressed over how to count multi-pane windows. Would all pre-K be able to count that high.

Cooking? Families may not cook every night for a variety of reasons. There are many times supper needs to be as quick as possible and this may mean nuking something or even (gasp!) eating fast food.

Reading and drawing: Is a pre-K reading or is the parent? Why 20 minutes? Will a pre-K have a good concept of 20 minutes. What if the story the kid wants is only 10 minutes long? Do they have to pick a longer story and start over? Do they read another short story and combine the times? If so, do they need to draw pictures about both stories? My kid would have spent 1-2 hours trying to get the picture right.

I still remember the assignment where my K kid told me she had to count the number of cylinders (cans, jars, etc.) and rectangular prisms in the pantry. We don't have a large pantry, but it still would have taken hours to go through the whole thing. Not to mention that most of the shelves were over her head. I modified it to doing one shelf. I'm sure somebody thought this was a great, real-life example, but I would have much rather had her spend five minutes circling cylinders and rectangular prisms on a worksheet.

In all of these cases a 5-10 minute worksheet would have been less demanding and been more productive.

I was an involved parent, but it worked best to do it according to my schedule. On a beautiful day, I might want to go to the park and look at butterflies instead of going to the store to get ingredients for a "cooking" recipe and then cooking.

Maybe, on a not so beautiful day, I'd rather bake cookies with my child than go on a butterfly hunt.

Maybe, rather than spending a lot of time on your activities I want to go to the library, or teach my kid to ride a bike, or play games (most games are great for math).

If I have to take an older sibling to soccer practice, but play on the playground with my pre-K or K kid, it doesn't mean that I'm a lazy or uninvolved parent.

There were times when I would curl up with my kids and spend hours reading chapter books to them. Was this lazy parenting? Would counting windows and doors be more educational? They didn't draw pictures, but we talked about the books.

These types of asignments are the worst kind of busy work. They take a lot of time and effort and add negligible educational value. Moreover, when you try to forcibly involve parents, you either catch them at a bad time, putting them in a bind and causing stress and resentment, or you take away from the time they had already planned on spending with the child doing something tailored to their childs interests and needs, and therefore far more valuable than the exercise someone's whimsy dreamed up.

OMG, I agree with this so much! These types of assignments are indeed the worst. When we were given these work in preschool, I let my son make up the numbers. We don't bake, period. Never understood why baking is considered the pinnacle of math education. For what it is worth, my son excels in math. Always has since he was two.

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher in Fairfax County. Homework up through grade 6 isn't supposed to be graded. Most teachers in my building assign very little if any hw. I don't see much purpose for assigning it.

I agree that if homework isn't graded there is no point in assigning it. In fact I think it can have a negative effect if it isn't corrected, because it can reinforce errors. Ideally, I think there should be homework that is corrected so that students misunderstandings can be caught early.

I'm a teacher in Fairfax County. Homework up through grade 6 isn't supposed to be graded. Most teachers in my building assign very little if any hw. I don't see much purpose for assigning it.

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.

First of all, I don't think pre-K and K should have homework.

Secondly, I think these assignments are awful: What if a kid doesn't see an bees or butterflies? What if the kid is scared of bees and butterflies?

Windows and doors? My kid would have stressed over how to count multi-pane windows. Would all pre-K be able to count that high.

Cooking? Families may not cook every night for a variety of reasons. There are many times supper needs to be as quick as possible and this may mean nuking something or even (gasp!) eating fast food.

Reading and drawing: Is a pre-K reading or is the parent? Why 20 minutes? Will a pre-K have a good concept of 20 minutes. What if the story the kid wants is only 10 minutes long? Do they have to pick a longer story and start over? Do they read another short story and combine the times? If so, do they need to draw pictures about both stories? My kid would have spent 1-2 hours trying to get the picture right.

I still remember the assignment where my K kid told me she had to count the number of cylinders (cans, jars, etc.) and rectangular prisms in the pantry. We don't have a large pantry, but it still would have taken hours to go through the whole thing. Not to mention that most of the shelves were over her head. I modified it to doing one shelf. I'm sure somebody thought this was a great, real-life example, but I would have much rather had her spend five minutes circling cylinders and rectangular prisms on a worksheet.

In all of these cases a 5-10 minute worksheet would have been less demanding and been more productive.

I was an involved parent, but it worked best to do it according to my schedule. On a beautiful day, I might want to go to the park and look at butterflies instead of going to the store to get ingredients for a "cooking" recipe and then cooking.

Maybe, on a not so beautiful day, I'd rather bake cookies with my child than go on a butterfly hunt.

Maybe, rather than spending a lot of time on your activities I want to go to the library, or teach my kid to ride a bike, or play games (most games are great for math).

If I have to take an older sibling to soccer practice, but play on the playground with my pre-K or K kid, it doesn't mean that I'm a lazy or uninvolved parent.

There were times when I would curl up with my kids and spend hours reading chapter books to them. Was this lazy parenting? Would counting windows and doors be more educational? They didn't draw pictures, but we talked about the books.

These types of asignments are the worst kind of busy work. They take a lot of time and effort and add negligible educational value. Moreover, when you try to forcibly involve parents, you either catch them at a bad time, putting them in a bind and causing stress and resentment, or you take away from the time they had already planned on spending with the child doing something tailored to their childs interests and needs, and therefore far more valuable than the exercise someone's whimsy dreamed up.

Anonymous wrote:

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.

How are your spelling lists made up if not from word patterns? My spelling lists in elementary were based on word patterns, and I think it was very helpful. My kids didn't have spelling until 4th grade when they started doing Wordly Wise, a program based on roots and prefixes. I think it helped a lot with their spelling and vocabulary.

Finland does have tests and homework. In fact they even pre teach before units. This no homework craze is ruining our schools and causing people to move to private which in turn reduces funding as governments turn away from funding schools.

What needs to stop is kids taking more than one or two year's worth of college credit classes before graduating. Go back to taking a couple of AP classes senior year and give homework to general ed classes and we'll have a more adequate system for everyone.

Lots of different opinions here and I'll add mine. I think homework is fine in elementary school, but through grades 1-5 or even 2-5. I remember loving homework. The problem I see is that children in the US are at school until 3:15 or even 6 pm. That's really late for elementary school kids.
Half a day or more is gone and you have to fit family time, after school activities and homework into what's left of it.
Our elementary school kids in Europe are done with school at 12 pm or 1 pm the latest. That gives plenty of time for homework, family time and playing outside.
My DS is at school from 8:45 to 3:15 pm. That's a long day. My days were that long in high school only and I was exhausted almost daily.
1 class period is only 45 minutes. The teachers make every minute count. There's a 10 minute recess between different subjects.
We also don't have "1st grade teacher" or "3rd grade teacher". We have math teacher, English teacher, history teacher. They teach the same subject but to all ages.
We build on our knowledge. The order we follow makes sense and subject matter gets harder. If I forget something, the teacher reminds me when I took it and I can always get the textbook and reread.
Here in US it seems like kids can skip a foreign language class, take breaks from the subject altogether or for example take US history without knowing anything about Ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt or Mesopotamia.
While kids in Finland barely have any homework, we have lots of HW according to the chart posted by PP. We also outranked Finland in Pisa 2015. So, country with lots of homework came ahead of a country with little HW. No wonder it's a big debate here.
Finland has better teachers, nicer schools, more money spent per student. We have our good curriculum and plenty of homework.
Finland is reforming their education system and we are watching.
I had a pen-friend from Finland in early 90s when I Was about 12. I got to visit her school and I sat in class as they were taking a test. The teacher even said that I can help her. She had studied for the test on the bus home with us from the port. Not sure when they changed to no HW and no tests.

Oh, and add me to the crowd who sees homework in elementary school as useless and 2h in high school as nuts. I personally don't see the need for any homework in elementary or middle or more than half an hour nightly in high school at the very most.

That also dovetails with the average nightly amount in Finland for high schoolers (2.8h/wk, or just under 34m/night). In the US, the average is a silly 6.1h/wk, or about 1h13m a night.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/11453912/Homework-around-the-world-how-much-is-too-much.html

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.

it's nice that you disagree but as they say science doesn't give a shit what you believe.

+1. PreK teacher. I have parents who ask for homework almost each year, and I know my neighbor teacher gives it gladly. Public education is nuts in the US.

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.

it's nice that you disagree but as they say science doesn't give a shit what you believe.

If I had enough money to live on one income I would stay home (dad) and homeschool.
besides the social part, I could teach a whole school day to my kid in 30-40 minutes. no problem.
all they do in school is stand in line and shut up . waste of time

has anyone here allowed their 4th or 5th grader to ignore the worksheets and busywork?
If the parent found a different better way to teach the same material and ignored the homework.