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| Thursday, September 28, 2006 |
| Too Much Homework |
Not me, though. E has too much homework. I am struggling to find proper routines, lessons and consequences.
This year has been a GIGANTIC leap for her in the level of responsibility required. It is also a big time with extra activities - she's doing two performances right now, instead of one, she just started soccer, and uh .... we went to Disneyland.
i am trying to figure out what to do. Every day this week, she's forgotten one of her assignments SOMEWHERE - whether she left a completed assignment at her after-school program; left a notebook in her desk at school which she needed to do an assignment in (at home!); left an explanatory paper at school; left a completed assignment at home on her desk; and then ... "didn't realize" that there was a back page on a worksheet she was supposed to complete.
Agh!!
I am implementing a routine where she does all her homework, checks it off her list as she puts it in her folder/notebook, and then lets me check it. If I go over her assignment list, and something is checked off but not completed and put into her folder and ready to be put in her backpack .... SOMETHING will happen to her.
What will happen to her? I do not know. I am not a fan of punishment -- for the sake of punishment alone - as a deterrent, as a philosphical whack with a stick. I prefer to find a way to create a consequence, which is related to what went wrong.
But I don't know what that is in this instance. the evenings are so intense already, and if you throw in stuff like a trip and jetlag and an open house (at their school last night), we feel like we've been thrown into the deep end.
One thing that E is involved in right now, and is eating into her time, is the newspaper that she and her friends started, and have kept up. She is the "Head Reporter" and is responsible for filling in most of the articles. A lot of the kids who started hte newspaper have fallen away as their other activities took over (the newspaper was started in the winter, when things are pretty quiet), and so E ends up picking up a lot of slack. She's currently writing a story (fiction) in installments - a chapter a week.
That is the thing I am considering cutting out. I have already told her that I expect her to do her writing on the weekends, b/c she cannot do it on Tuesday/Wednesday nights. this week, that didn't work out, b/c we weren't here. This weekend, however, I hope to enforce it.
If anyone has any other suggestions, PLEASE let me know!! |
posted by Zuska @ 9:30 PM   |
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| 5 Comments: |
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It seems like it would be a shame to make her quit the creative outlet of the newspaper. Maybe this is just the time she learns to manage her own priorities (with guidance of course), and suffers any consequences at school herself. I remember having detention for forgetting one workbook page in 6th grade - and making sure my homework was done after that! hmm...maybe the threat of detention would get me to do my law school reading?
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I agree about the creative outlet. It would be a shame to lose that.
My mom would cut our TV time. If your daughter doesn't have enough time to finish her responsibilities, maybe the logical conclusion is that she doesn't have enough time to watch TV or movies (even if on the weekend)?
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We honestly NEVER watch t.v. We have family movie night on Fridays (when we're all too exhausted to do anything else), and that is it!
But I do think I agree about letting the teacher dole out some consequences. I struggle with the fact taht some of the problem is on the nights that she has newspaper deadlines ... she would put the newspaper first, and I really can't just sit by and watch her do that.
I'm going to try my best this weekend to be sure she does her newspaper stuff. We also have Monday off for Yom Kippur, so it's likely a good week to adjust.
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Check out the book The Case Against Homework (in your oodles of free time -- ha!)...
I'm thinking if she has more than an hour a night (depending on grade), she has too much.
Yes, she may need to manage her homework system bettter -- but sometimes kids become 'forgetful' when they're overwhelmed by the sheer volume of meaningless make-work.
Keep us posted.
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i doubt lawmommy (or anyone else for that matter) is going to catch this comment, but the problem with excessive homework comes from the excessive demands put on teachers from all levels. state and town curriculum objectives are piled on top of federal guidelines (no child left behind, anyone?) to the point that the problem of homework won't go away until the problems of curriculum are solved.
i didn't have homework until junior high. i also wasn't expected to master the skills and concepts that i see the girls getting heaped on them when i was in elementary school. we certainly didn't have computers, much less the opportunity to produce a weekly school newspaper on a computer.
are we pushing kids too hard and too fast? was my generation treated with kid gloves? i think it's easy to point the finger at homework and say it is evil, but as a society, as the adults in charge, we have allowed this to happen and there's no going back. unless there was a sweeping, nation-wide movement to scale back educational standards (and all the messy baggage that comes with it) the problem of homework is the legacy we leave our children and future generations to come.
much like the deficit. there's another thing we're dumping on the kids.
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It seems like it would be a shame to make her quit the creative outlet of the newspaper. Maybe this is just the time she learns to manage her own priorities (with guidance of course), and suffers any consequences at school herself. I remember having detention for forgetting one workbook page in 6th grade - and making sure my homework was done after that! hmm...maybe the threat of detention would get me to do my law school reading?