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Thursday 8 December 2011

Educate the Parents: Avoiding homework

Educate the Parents: Avoiding homework: When I was in primary school I remember having homework but not when I was really little. Changed days. I used to finish my homework in a...

Avoiding homework


When I was in primary school I remember having homework but not when I was really little. Changed days. I used to finish my homework in about ten minutes and then run out to play. These days it takes ten minutes to read the instructions.

So much to my seven year old’s delight I often miss half of it out. First there is the reading book, which is boring and which he gets nothing out of. Anyway he’s read it at school already. What is the point of reading it again? He’s not a goldfish.

So we tend to skip that part. Reading is not a homework task in our house. Instead we sit down together at bedtime and he reads a book to me, a book which is write a bit more advanced than his homework book, which he finds interesting and which occasionally has a ne word for him to learn.

I don’t know any child who nags their mum to do homework but I get nagged to sit down and read with H. And if he had his way he would be reading to me all evening.

Then we have maths games which require sitting and reading instructions, locating a dice and counters and sometimes cutting out also. By that time we’re both fed up. On son’s insistence we did one this week. It involved five minutes of reading rules and about two minutes of maths.

So usually we skip his reading book and maths game. Instead we read together and go on maths websites. And son thinks he’s pulling a fast one on me!

Thursday 1 December 2011

Breakfast clubs


Daughter has just told me about kids in her class who have chocolate for breakfast. Not the evil cocoa pops but the real deal – a bar of chocolate. Mine get cereal and toast. 

Meanwhile I have just been reading about a trial scheme in Toronto to feed children up. 

68% of the children, in what is regarded as a poor part of Toronto, were coming to school without breakfast.
20% missed both breakfast and lunch. 

Since the school introduced a breakfast and lunch club the number of twelve and thirteen year old pupils failing to achieve the minimum reading level fell by 50% and the number achieving high reading scores increased by 10. 

The figures were just as good in science. The percentage of students failing fell from 44% to 28%. 

Impressive figures.