Читать книгу Homework Sanity - Roger Wilkerson - Страница 11

An item you need to watch for from day one of school:

Are the assignments given to my child homework or busywork?

The irony is that people focus too much on grades and too little on organizing the assigned work.

This challenge is compounded when the child has more than one teacher. Teachers fall into various categories:

(a) organized

(b) disorganized

(c) focused

(d) scattered

(e) new to teaching

(f) teaching a long time and

(g) other

These are not necessarily exclusive or logical. For example, it is possible to have a teacher who is (a), (d) and (f). These teachers may be able to organize the work, which is the start of their process. In the classroom they may be scattered, and may have taught for too long to see their weaknesses any more. Homework vs. busywork is simply a symptom of how your child’s teacher’s mind works. This is critical information if, later in the year, you challenge the teacher’s thinking.

Trust your intuition. If it feels like the teachers are assigning too much homework, then they are assigning too much homework. Do not overthink it and become trapped into thinking about how you would teach the class. If it feels like they are not assigning enough homework, then trust that, too.

The best example of this is that children are not being taught basic writing tools, spelling, and math multiplication tables, like when we went to school. I work with some schools where they do not even grade spelling, and with other schools where they somehow manage to teach math without multiplication tables. Without these basic building blocks, every child naturally falls behind.

To keep it simple, ask yourself these basic questions every time you see homework:

Does this assignment help my child grow today in reading, writing, or math?

Does my child already know this material?

Did my child get enough practice this week for reading, writing and math?

Can I connect any of the assignments to my children’s lives inside this house? For example, if they were assigned twenty minutes of reading, can I sit with them and read for twenty minutes? Does the math apply to anything financial in the household this week?