Hellobee Boards

I am looking forward to reading what the parents of older children have experienced.

I view my role as a supporter, not an executor when it comes to homework. If a child can not complete the vast majority of it alone, my gut tells me it's not appropriate for that age level and I would have no problem talking to the teacher to understand their reasoning for assigning it OR my child has some kind of issue and I need to dig deeper into understanding what is going on (can he not see properly, is he having trouble with letters, numbers, etc).

There's a big backlash against homework on social media (it seems) and I truly wonder how many parents have actually said that their kid isnt going to complete the assignments.

Regarding activities after school, right now the plan is not do anything and see how the adjustment to a full day pans out. I have no desire to put my son in any kind of acadamic training after school and if he wants to do a sport, we'll have to see what the time committment is. I feel like I sound like a slacker mom, but with bedtime at 7:30 for the forseeable future, there has to be a limit and some downtime.

I have a kindergartner starting next week and K homework has been highly complained about at our school so I'm worried. I think full day of school is a long day for kids and parents of older kids say they're routintely sent home with work taking an hour. That's just completely age inappropriate, especially after a long day. I know she's going to be tired so she'd probably rest and then play outside and with her sister before dinner. Not enough outside time is only going to lead to more behavior problems in the classroom. It just seems like this nonsensical negative feedback loop that schools are on

I'm curious to see how this will go. My son starts school next week and I know there is homework starting the first day. I am under the impression that it's like what @Mamaof2: described, just a one page worksheet. We'll see though. My current thought of how we will approach it is that homework will have to be done first thing when we get home and then he will be free to do whatever he wants with his time. Who knows if that will actually work though.

My LO is too young for now, but I recall from when I was in elementary school that homework was all about practicing the concepts learned at school, particularly in math. We would learn the concept at school but there wasn't a lot of time to do the repetition, so that was left to be done at home.

Later on, homework became about being able to work on something for multiple hours and present multiple aspects to a topic (think: research projects, book reports).

I've seen this floating round on FB lately and I definitely agree with it for younger kids!

I have pretty strong feelings on homework, I used to be the coordinator for the after school homework help program at one of our local library branches and I also taught briefly.

I think the purpose of homework is to help reiterate the lessons learned in class and help prepare for the next day. However from the teaching standpoint I know that sometimes homework is an extension of the work done in class that day because (due to classroom and behavior management issues) lack of time causes some of the work to be taken home. I think without homework that some students would struggle. I can imagine that without homework kids would have the opportunity to do more activities/"be kids".

The majority of my students at the library were K-6 and some weeks they would come in with pages upon pages of homework, we would struggle for 3 hours every single day of that week to get it done and they would get nothing out out of it. Then some days they would have a page or two and have to read a bit and they would really understand what we were talking about and grasp the concept. The past school year they instituted a no homework policy which was interesting to watch. On one hand it was nice that they no longer had 20 pages of homework every night but I also saw students that took a little longer to grasp concepts fall further and further behind which was sad for me. I think that there can be a balance, a page or two here and there so that kids that need that reinforcement get it but also they aren't overwhelmed with work.

I don't have kids yet but these are my thoughts - I think homework can be helpful to include the parents in what the child is learning. Like others have said, I also believe that it helps reiterate what was taught.

When I was in High School, precal homework was optional. We were assigned homework every night, but it was never checked. It was just up to us to do it. I didn't do it and my grades were terrible. The next year, I made an effort to do the homework assigned and my grade went up over 20%.

So I really do believe homework can help with learning.

My kids aren't in grade school yet, but Ive taught K, 1st, and 2nd. When I taught kindergarten and 1st, I have a homework notebook that had a numbered list of activities with a number assigned each day (the calendar was filled out monthly). It included things that were designed to be done with an adult, like "count all your shoes by 2s", "see who can come up with the most words with the ___ sound". There was also an expectation to read a book together before bed. In 1st grade, they also needed to practice spelling words/math facts nightly. Parents signed off on all activities before Friday. My main focus for homework at that age was for parents to interact with kids/show interest in their school work and kids to be responsible for bringing their notebook to & from school.
In 2nd grade, the school had a set homework policy across the board, so each child had to do a reading log, practice spelling, and complete a math worksheet each night. I didn't like this at all and it ended up being a gigantic hassle to get kids to complete their work.
I think some sort of homework is needed. I think parents need to give their kids the message that school is important and needs to be given extra attention (even if it's an extra 5 minutes a night). I think teachers need to make homework meaningful and not just busywork. And, as kids get older, it gives them valuable time-management and work ethic skills.

I like that LO can practice independently and/or get support from yet another teacher (her parent). I support limited homework Monday thru Thursdays, 10 minutes per grade level (2nd grade=20 minutes, 3rd grade=30 minutes) up to an hour max.

I've got a Kinder kid, who did a full Pre-K program last year with occasional homework. She was always excited about homework and eager to do it. We got a packet of probably 7 worksheets to do over the 2 week Christmas break. We set to do one each day and they probably took less than 5 minutes each.

She got her first Kinder assignment. Find the letters of her name in print (newspaper, magazine, etc) and cut them out and return them in a week. The request was for each of the letters to be at least one inch so she could cut them out well. The goal to recognize the letters of their name and to work on fine motor skills. I tore out pages of magazines that had letters that met the size requirements (not specific to her name), gave her the stack and told her to get to work finding the letters and cutting. She worked on it while DH made breakfast one morning. Again, she was excited to do the work.

So all in, so far I don't mind it. The tasks have value (and aren't just busy work) and we have plenty of time allowed to complete the task and the teacher specifically requests that we "help" and not "do".