Recently I attended the meeting for parents at the opening of the 2013-2014 school year in which we explained the main lines of work that the children will do in the course. It is a meeting that I have been attending for some years, as many as my daughter has been in primary school. In all the presentations there is always a point or order of the meeting in which the Director of the College stops a few minutes: the duties that are sent home.
What he always comments is that homework should not take children more than fifteen or thirty minutes each day and that if that time goes on there is a problem. Also this year, that the little one starts fifth, she has recommended that parents encourage their autonomy, that they be managed with the agenda, that they use the means at their disposal: computers, applications and books and that parents let's get away because they start to be independent and also that they will organize with the rest of classmates.
Before the fifth grade of primary school, to put a limit on which the children begin to demand autonomy, the children do homework at home although they are only to fix what they have learned in school, practice the knowledge acquired and share their process with parents Learning. For parents that we can dedicate time is a good way to know how the child progresses and helps us anticipate what lacks. For example, if you take half an hour to do a subtraction with led we should assume that the child has a problem and that he has to ask in class how it is done. It is also the best way to encourage you to participate with classmates, to ask for help from the teacher and in the event that a parent is overwhelmed you can try to explain to learn it.
I am not in favor of interfering with the teacher's educational process that in the end he is the one who knows, or should, know his students and therefore his strengths and weaknesses. And that's why I run away from trying to explain things or do my homework because all I can get is to make the teacher angry.
Limit the debate of duties if or duties are not very poor. In my opinion, the key to what happens in education is that the values that have to do with effort, competitiveness, the ability to learn and ask questions, the need to know more and want to learn more things have been lost autonomously and especially respect for teacher and his figure as a transmitter, not of information, that Google does when we search, but of knowledge.
So this year we are delighted at home because we have to leave autonomy for the little one. And so we let him do his work alone, he asks us if he has doubts, he explains that he participates in class, he informs us about the progress school (if there are any) and we are also attentive asking each other questions to know How it progresses
And no, we don't always ask those questions on homework days, I like to ask always and at any time. Because any time is good to practice mathematics, for example, by letting him pay and forcing him to be attentive with the laps, to make calculations with the weights or the units, to ask what time it is and how much is missing, to form sentences in English, etc.
All these questions are enough to know if homework is the problem or that you don't know what you learn in class.
In Peques and More | Do you think that homework cancels the pleasure of learning from your children? Then read "The Myth of Duties" by Alfie Kohn Image | NJLA
