Why homework packets only on Mondays

and not Fridays? Apparently, this is a very common practice. They do it at

Irene...

Well, just for the record, ds had his first homework sent home on
Friday. He had to write his name 7 times. He needs practice on it, so
that was fine with me. I think he is going to normally get his
homework on Friday. That's after 2 full weeks of school, btw - he
didn't get anything assigned over Labor Day weekend.

Yes, I am grateful we are not in CA!

Vanessa...

Laura Faussone...

neuro-typical?

Vanessa...

Maybe. If so, that's cool...being normal is fairly typical of me;)
V

bizby40...

I assumed she meant intuitive-thinking from the Meyers-Briggs

enigma...

nope, i meant neuro-typical :)
but you've reminded me i haven't played with any of the online
Meyers-Briggs tests lately (hey V! look! capital letters!)

bizby40...

I change on those things every time I take them. I test out as
wishy-washy.

Vanessa...

Glad to know the shift key does work;)
V

lee

personality types.

Beware: When your child gets to high school he'll meet some teacher
like me. I give homework every night...Friday is just a long night;)

Ericka Kammerer...

toypup...

I found that there was more self-directed learning in my AP courses. They

Ericka Kammerer...

But I think that is utterly ridiculous. The only way
it would make sense is if it was *necessary* to spend that
much time to learn the material. I suspect, however, that
if it's truly that much homework, then it's because there's
some sort of "ball-busting" attitude going on with the class.

Ericka Kammerer...

Sure. If others accept this, and you've been warned,
you either follow along or beat your head against a brick wall
for a year, which seems silly. But I think it is ridiculous
and even unethical for them to have such a situation. There's
no reason, in my opinion, for eliminating many qualified kids
from considering the class because they don't want to give
their lives up to a couple of AP classes, when they could learn
the material perfectly well in a more reasonable and balanced
way.

Ericka Kammerer...

I'm not saying that there aren't reasons to take AP
classes. I'm saying it's silly to create a situation where
a ludicrous amount of work is required.

Ericka Kammerer...

For me, a semester of calc at UMich (yes, for math and engin.
majors) was 14 weeks at 2 1-hour classes/week, which works out
to 28 hours of in-class instruction. Double that if you want
to make it BC calc. (Most of the other AP classes will only

toypup...

We've actually been able to complete it since I've had the talk with the
teacher. She helped DS ease into the routine by giving him the homework
packet on Fridays for a few weeks. His fine motor skills have improved with
practice and he enjoys homeowork now (it's a huge difference, and an amazing
turnaround considering the timeframe). I still feel like it's a lot of
work, so that is why I want to spread the work out, so I don't feel stressed
out about completing it, so I don't have to worry about how we will do it
when I work or he has activities.

bizby40...

Here is our latest problem:

My son is in 3rd grade. At our school, there is a big division
between K-2 and 3-5. Once in 3rd grade, the kids are expected to be
much more responsible for themselves. They are given a planner to
write their homework assignments in, and they are responsible for
writing it, knowing what they're supposed to do, and turning it in.

But the teacher has been sending home assignments with no
instructions! The first day she sent home what appeared to be a

Rosalie B....

Sue...

There is a very good possibility that instructions were supposed to be
written down in the planner and the kids are not doing that. If that is what
is happening, then you need to explain to your son that he needs to write
the instructions as she is talking. We have planners too starting in third
grade.

coloring sheet! It turned out that they were supposed to write a
sentence (paragraph?) describing what was going on (it was the water
cycle), but nowhere on the sheet or in the planner did it say so. And
you know, my boy is a good kid and tries hard, but there is just no
way he's going to remember oral instructions 5 hours later!

The next assignment was mapping and graphing. He brought home a blank
grid and said he was supposed to map his room. He insisted that
everything in the room should fit inside one grid square, but that
made no sense to me whatsoever. After all, his bed is probably 20
times larger than his bedside table, and takes up at least a quarter
of his room. The only thing he had to go by was one he'd done in
class that did indeed have a huge box for the room, and then tiny
little one-square things marked along the edges. Furthermore, for
some reason, he'd started marking the rows and columns with the second
row and second column. He even had the lower left square blacked out,
so it was obvious that it was something the teacher had told him to
do, but it made no sense since it meant that half of those tiny little
squares along the edge had no coordinates.

Here's the kicker. I sent e-mail to the teacher. I explained that he
was having trouble knowing what to do, and that when we tried to call
his "homework buddies" they were often as confused as he was. I said
that I wanted to make sure that he was doing what he needed to do, and
could she please make sure that there were written instructions and/or
examples? And she said no! Or rather, she said that what she was
doing already was sufficient. It seems to me that when a 42 year old
woman can look at the homework and have no idea what to do with it,
that it's a bit much to expect an 8 year old boy to know what to do.

Ericka Kammerer...

The goal may be for him to write down the instructions
himself, or do whatever it takes for him to be able to remember
them. Is that what she's claiming? If so, can you get him to
take notes on what he hears in class?

bizby40...

I don't think so. It's not like they have notebooks that they take
notes in. They do worksheets and handouts and so forth. I'm not even
sure what she tells them and when. For example with the mapping
assignment, they did one like it in class, so she assumed they'd know
what to do. But she didn't grade or correct what they'd done, and
what he brought home just didn't look right to me. With other
assignments, who knows? She may just hold it up as they're packing up
and tell them what to do.

So all I can do is give him the vague instructions to "pay attention
more" and "know what you're supposed to do for homework." This is
not a boy who focuses well anyway.

Tori M...

Ugh this teaching method is awful for people that need to hear things more
then once to understand it or to read it several times to put it right. I
would never have passed this class.

It seems that they need a few more intermediate steps to reach their
goal.

Ericka Kammerer...

Sounds like it. Or maybe she's curious to see what
they'll do without much guidance. It'll be interesting to
see what comes back on interim reports or the report cards.
When do they do parent-teacher conferences? Will you have
some grade feedback before then?

bizby40...

Back to school night is next week, so we'll get a chance to talk to
her then. Parent/Teacher conferences coincide with the end of the
first 9 weeks, so that puts them mid-October. No, we get no grade
feedback before then, though the teacher can call in a parent at any
time if there is a problem. Grades at this age are not important, and
are on a 1-2-3 scale instead of A-F.

Ericka Kammerer...

I'd be curious not so much because the grades are
so important, but because they're an indication of the
teacher's assessment of whether or not the work the child
is doing is acceptable. If he's confused but getting good
grades, then my interpretation of what she's looking for
would be different than if he were confused but getting
bad grades. She blew you off when you asked about it,
but you still don't know how big a deal this is. If the
homework is supposed to be somewhat exploratory and she's
looking to see what he comes up with, then it might be a
bit nutty but there probably isn't a problem (and good
grades would be consistent with this scenario). If she's
hell bent on requiring them to remember complicated oral
directions without being able to write them down, then it
*is* a problem (and bad grades would be consistent with
this scenario). I just thought it would be nice if you
had some basis to distinguish between the two before you
went in to talk to her. If she's not happy with his
progress, I'd choose to fight the battle, because I
think it's quite damaging to set kids up for failure
like that. If she's just a bit nutty in her approach
and she's happy with what he's doing, I probably wouldn't
fuss much about it at all.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Best wishes,
Ericka

DD is in 6th grade now, so we've been through the 3rd grade
"independence" movement before, but they never stopped giving her
homework with instructions.

get you out of a semester long class, though.) High school
here meets for 36 weeks (once you've taken out breaks and
finals week and that sort of thing). At 4 hours a week, that
would be 144 hours. (I calculated what my HS schedule
would have been, which was more like 45 minutes/day for
5 days/week.) So, I still come up with a pretty big
difference between 56 hours of in class time and 144 hours
of in class time (or 132 for your 33 week schedule).
I think I might have been able to schedule calc in college
as a 1 hour/day, 4 days/week class, but the 2 1-hour classes/week
schedule was more common (I think the 4-day class was taught
in smaller classes with TAs and the 2-day classes were taught
in lecture halls with professors). My recollection is that
I probably did 1-2 hours of homework/class, which is about
in line with the usual college expectation of 1-2x the amount
of class time. So, in a semester of calc. I would have put
in about 70 hours total. Call that 140 for the year, and
then compare to your schedule of 132 in-class hours plus an
additional 132-264 hours outside of class and that just
doesn't seem necessary or reasonable to me to learn
calculus, at least for someone likely to keep up with a
calc. class in HS.

Ericka Kammerer...

I didn't say less than an hour a week. I said
2 1-hour classes/week.

Ericka Kammerer...

Most AP classes are the equivalent of a semester
of college work, with the exception of calc BC and perhaps
a couple others depend on the school (at my alma mater, the
only way to get out of two semesters of calc is to score
a 5 on the BC exam--score a 4 and you only get credit for
one semester). But, as I said, even if you make it two semesters
of college calc, you've still got a significant difference
in time--and the difference for most AP classes would be
even more stark, since they'd only be replacing a semester
of college work.

Best wishes,
Ericka

were more like college courses. In fact we were lucky enough to have some
teachers who taught in our community college also teach at our high school
so we could get college credit for their class. It was an easier pace in AP
classes, because they assumed we already knew how to study, so they didn't
have to assign work.

Well, there's a lot of variation. Many
schools *do* send home the packet on Fridays. Others
(like ours) don't send home packets at all. They just
assign things on a day-by-day basis.
Those that don't give you the weekend probably
have some policy about not assigning routine homework
on weekends. This is, as you say, somewhat shortsighted,
in that depending on the child's schedule, some kids would
rather spread the homework out and do some of it on the
weekend. On the other hand, I wouldn't bet the farm that
if they went to a Friday-to-Friday scenario, the homework
wouldn't increase in volume over time ;-)

Best wishes,
Ericka

dragonlady...

My son is at a college where it's even stranger: they do one class at a
time. Each class starts on a Monday, goes for 3-1/2 weeks, then they
get a 4 day weekend and start the next class.

I thought it would be difficult for language and math, particularly, but
he seems to be thriving. And his best friend LOVES the intense language
classes: during the 3-1/2 weeks, she said, she learned to think well in
French. Even though she might not have another French class for a year,
she says it works well. (There are some great advantages for things

JennP...

Our neighbor's son went to Colorado College and they also have this
schedule. He said he loved it because you were totally immersed in one class
at a time.

like serious field trips: her fifth year French class, for example,
will travel to Montreal for two weeks.)

I've known a couple of high school kids who were in the block/semester
program: three (or four) classes each semester. They all seemed pretty
happy with it.

DS's school. The teacher was sending DS homework on Fridays until he could

toypup...

All the homework is the same for each grade level at DS's school. The
teacher has no control and no ability to individualize except to assign
extra homework to struggling students.

bizby40...

Well, that's one thing our school does right then. First, they
actually *require* every 6th grader to take music. They can choose
between orchestra (strings), band (winds), and "music" (mostly voice,
but some introduction to guitar).

Second, they do indeed split the block class, so that half is band,
and half is something else. The "something else" is what they call
"exploratory". Things like art, language, and technology. They
aren't quite electives since every student gets all four, just at
different times of the year.

I don't know how it works in 7th and 8th, except that I know music is
optional then.

JennP...

Wow. IMO, that is a horrible, useless and lazy policy. As a third grade

bizby40...

I don't think that is the case because 1) the space in the planner
really isn't big enough to do that, 2) the teacher actually checks
everyone's planner before they come home and hasn't told him to do
that, and 3) the teacher didn't tell me that when I wrote to her.

Besides, I don't think he could possibly have written enough
instructions in his planner to answer our questions about the map
grid.

Really, though, it's beside the point. The point is that he's coming
home without enough information to complete his homework correctly,
and there is no way for me as his parent to help figure it out or
check up on him. Whether the solution is for the instructions to be
provided by the teacher, or for the kids to write it in their
planners, or for the teacher to post assignments with instructions on
her website, I don't really care. What I care about is that I brought
her attention to the problem and she basically blew me off.

Rosalie B....

I had the same problem once but it was because we moved in the middle
of the year. This sounds like a first year teacher? Since your
daughter is older, I'm assuming she didn't have this teacher.

It's possible that your son is supposed to have done more in class so
that he would know how to complete the assignment, and that he did not
- whether this was his fault for goofing off, or her fault for not
picking up on the fact that he didn't have enough time is hard to
determine from here.

In any case, you have at least two courses of action.

1) Do nothing. You say most of his homework buddies are also
confused.. If her directions are really inadequate for most of the
class, then most of the class will not be able to do the homework.

2) Get together with other parents and approach her as a group, and if
you again get no satisfaction, go up the chain of command - i.e. to
the principal.

teacher, the homework I assigned matched what we were doing in class each
day for practice and reinforcement. Sounds like they are giving homework
just to give it. I can hear the frustration in your posts. Good luck.

Vanessa...

Just guessing, but I suggest the change is probably due to state testing
and insuring that each student get homework that further prepares for
the test. Not a great policy, but something that I've heard rumbles
about in the quest for better test scores.
V

get with the program, but is there any reason not to give a kid more time to
do it, more flexibility to build in extracurricular activities? It's not
that the teacher doesn't have it together by Fridays. In fact, DS's teacher

Barbara...

SNIP

I've glanced through the entire thread, and don't think anyone
responded with my thoughts on this.

It seems that each week of school has a particular thread or idea to
convey to the kids, at least in the lower grades. It might be the
letter *H,* the 7 table in multiplication, the Lewis and Clark
expedition, or etc etc. Homework given on Friday would be a review of
last week's work so, logically, would be due on Monday, before going on
to new things. (After all, if you assume that enough kids have
mastered next week's work in advance that giving the package on Friday
would be worthwhile, then why teach the subject in the first place?)

Banty...

IME, at least the year my son got his homework packet on Friday, it didn't break
down quite like that. The curriculum isn't broken down quite so clearly week to
week. So the homework packet had a fair amount of material that my son could
work on. Plus, he got a preview just looking through the materials.
Furthermore, since a written composition was due every week (this was third
grade! - I didn't have that until seventh grade), he could find out the
category/topic and start on that.

Homework given on Monday relates to and reinforces the things that the
kids will be learning *that* week. I suppose the better question might
be why not give the flexibility of allowing some of Monday's homework
to be turned in by the *next* Monday. (The answer being that there
would be just as many people who hate that as anything else.)

Banty...

Because there'd be a hue and cry about "spoiling" weekends. Although, with the
same discipline that families have to apply in these Monday work packets due
Fridays now, those who don't want weekends "spoiled" could accomplish their
goal.

I could also see why teachers need the weekend to grade the stuff and get it out
of the way for a fresh start the following week.

had everything ready by Thursday, but she just doesn't hand it out until
Mondays, because that's how the school does it. Is there a reason behind
that? I plan to work around that by buying the workbooks and having DS do
some of the work through the weekends (it looks like the pages assigned are
pretty predictable) so that he is not overwhelmed on the weekdays,
especially if I have to work or we have an activity that day. It just

bizby40...

Well, the principal is well known for standing behind the teachers no
matter what. But other parents are talking about the same problems I
am. All the boys we know seem to be confused. So my hope is that
they will end up dealing with the problem somehow.

BTW, this is her second year teaching third grade. She taught
kindergarten for a year or two before then, and is old enough to have
taught a few years at another school, but I don't know her history
prior to our school.

DS has been lucky to be in small classes since kindergarten, but this
year they have 25 in each 3rd grade class. They sent home a notice
that the gifted resources teacher was going to teach one of the
reading classes so they could get smaller sizes, but then someone
whose son was in that class said her son told her that the third
teacher isn't teaching them anymore. But we haven't gotten notice
that she isn't. So it sounds like the third grade is really crowded
and scrambling.

stumps me why they do this, though.

I've heard one of the reasons is they want the children to have some free
time, but I think the parents should know if the kids would do better with
the homework spread out over 7 days versus 4, don't you think? Then the
parents can alot the homework as necessary, or the children can do it if
they are old enough. Personally, we like having 7 days to do the work. The
days are much less stressful.

Cathy Kearns...

Some schools, and some entire districts, have policies that prohibit
homework assigned over the weekend for children in elementary school. They
feel it is too much, and kids should have the weekend off. And most
teachers like having the weekend to tweak their homework for the next week,
as by then they know exactly what they finished. I suspect if they moved
the homework to be handed out to everyone on Fridays they would find more
homework creeping in, as now the kids have 7 days to finish it.

Banty...

Ah yes this is the Weekends Are Sacred thing. Thou Dasn't Sully Family
Weekends, Thou Shouldst Cram Monday Through Thursday Intead.

toypup...

LOL. So very true.

Right - it doesn't work well for many families.

Can you get the teacher to give you a packet early? My son did have a third
grade teacher who would have this option, and it made it a lot easlier on us a a
family.

toypup...

I did and she did, but she said she could only do it until DS could

StephanieTheGoofy...

time

transition to the regular schedule. She said it haltingly, like she knew

StephanieTheGoofy...

not

she shouldn't be doing it but she will. He is doing fine in class now and
even requesting to do enrichment homework. Watching the other kids struggle
in class, I just couldn't bring myself to continue asking for it early. I
think what Cathy said about the policy may be correct, because they all seem
to do it that way here. I just wanted to find out why. I am waiting for my

Chookie...

Officially, they were going to give K homework in the second half of the year.

toypup...

What state is this? I'd like to dream about moving.

toto...

Here in Louisiana, the K homework packet for my dgd's school (and this

1. Read a book of choice every day for at least 10 minutes. This
includes reading aloud to someone, reading silently, or having a
grown-up read to you.

2. Review the �Sight Words of the Week� by cutting them out,
practicing reading them, and then storing them in a safe place such as
in a box, Ziploc bag, or large envelope. Writing each word with a
marker on an index card or pasting each word on an index card after
cutting them out is a good idea. This way, as we add to our sight word
collection throughout the year, the cards will be less likely to tear.

Dgd is in preK and her *homework* is to trace her name on some paper
the teacher sent home with a dotted font on it (5 times per page -

StephanieTheGoofy...

until

StephanieTheGoofy...

behind

StephanieTheGoofy...

free

StephanieTheGoofy...

with

StephanieTheGoofy...

the

StephanieTheGoofy...

one page per day). It takes her about 5 to 10 minutes to do this. We
read to her anyway at bedtime and throughout the day when she is home.
Currently she likes Harold and The Purple Crayon and Brown Bear, Brown

StephanieTheGoofy...

They

StephanieTheGoofy...

week,

toypup...

Ahh, maybe that's why they do it like that here. I suppose I'll just do
what I was planning to do with DS, then. I'd rather do 4 days of homework
over 7 days with DS, but I can see where homework creeping can happen where
he would get 7 days of homework to do over 7 days. There's enough pressure
for that around here.

StephanieTheGoofy...

That's what I was thinking. A half hour on a Saturday has a whole lot less
impact to the day thn after dinner on a weeknight.

Banty...

Yep.

StephanieTheGoofy...

third

StephanieTheGoofy...

StephanieTheGoofy...

us a a

StephanieTheGoofy...

And why they think it is their responsibility to manipulate these details?

Banty...

I'm not parsing this. Who is 'they' are 'their'?

StephanieTheGoofy...

The school. Why do they feel it is their responsibility to schedule
homework? It is a nonsense rhetorical question.

Bear (she *reads* this to us, but it's really memorized and reading
the pictures).

We've almost finished 3rd term, and DS1 has had homework precisely once!

books to arrive so we can start doing the work over the weekends again. I
like to go at a relaxing pace. Makes family life go by smoother.