Jeanine in TX Posted May 16, 2009 Share Posted May 16, 2009 In the last chapter of the logic section of WTM, SWB recommends that upper middle school students only be required to submit their homework weekly. If it is not completed, then they cannot go on to do further lessons. This could result in work being done over this summer. Does this really work? I give supplemental work during the summer, but I really do not want to teach lessons that should have been done during the school year. I need a break too. Currently, I give weekly assignment sheets and require homework to be submitted daily. Anything not done is completed over the weekend. DD is entering 7th grade. How can I encourage independence without potentially wrecking my summer?:glare: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sagira Posted May 16, 2009 Share Posted May 16, 2009 I can see this being a problem with some dc. :lurk5: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tabrett Posted May 16, 2009 Share Posted May 16, 2009 If you dc didn't turn in her homework and they were in public school, what would you do? I would ground my dc. The would loose all privileges over the weekend until all work is turned in complete. I also would prefer assignment to be turned in daily unless it was a project or research paper. But my real question is...How do you give "homework" when you homeschool. I, sometimes, still help my high school dd with homework. I always helped her when she was in public elementary school. One of the purposes of homeschooling (IMO ) is to have the evenings free of school work to pursue other things. If I am helping my dc with homework in the evenings, then I am homeschooling all day long! I can understand assigning some independent work, but why does it have to be done after school hours? I, personally, think kids are dead by that time and don't have the brain matter to really do quality work after "school" is done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MerryAtHope Posted May 16, 2009 Share Posted May 16, 2009 In the last chapter of the logic section of WTM, SWB recommends that upper middle school students only be required to submit their homework weekly. If it is not completed, then they cannot go on to do further lessons. This could result in work being done over this summer. Does this really work? I give supplemental work during the summer, but I really do not want to teach lessons that should have been done during the school year. I need a break too. Currently, I give weekly assignment sheets and require homework to be submitted daily. Anything not done is completed over the weekend. DD is entering 7th grade. How can I encourage independence without potentially wrecking my summer?:glare: Couldn't it work the same way--right now, anything not done is completed over the weekend. If they don't do their weekly work--I'd still have them do it over the weekend. I really don't see why it matters enough to change from daily assignments to weekly ones--except in the case of a longer project. (If math has daily homework, why not turn it in daily? If you have everything due on Friday & then find out the child has been doing it wrong all week--well, that doesn't make sense to me. I'd rather catch mistakes on Monday before they are cemented. I was sick for a week this spring--sick enough that I didn't check my son's math that week. But I really didn't want the kids to be off all week, so I had them do some work. That just happened to be the week that book taught how to multiply AND divide fractions. It took us weeks to undue what he learned incorrectly! I won't be doing that again!). In the case of a longer project, I would have the student submit (orally or in writing) their plan. If he or she has trouble breaking it down into daily or weekly assignments, then I would walk the student through that process. "What's your plan for getting this done? What's your timeline?" So, they are taking over responsibility, but with some oversight. Gradually as they show they know how to handle bigger projects without procrastinating, I would let them take over. I do think it can work to tell kids, "here's what needs to be done this week for all of your subjects, you can approach it how you want..." and see if they come up with a good plan. But I think they should turn in work as they go. Closer to college age I might not have them do that, I might do more of a syllabus approach. I just think there are steps between us giving them daily assignments, and putting them in charge of weekly ones--I think that some kids will need to be walked through the process of how to be self-directing. At least my kids do! Merry :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeanine in TX Posted May 17, 2009 Author Share Posted May 17, 2009 It has always made sense to me to require homework daily. After reading the WTM chapter, however, I started to wonder if I was impeding the development of independence in my older child. Currently, most daily homework consists of math, R & S grammar, latin, vocab workbook, and reading. Typically, I teach her in the morning; and then she works on her homework, while I teach her brother. Later, we break for lunch, have structured reading time, and then practice piano. If she has anything left over, she works on it in the late afternoon before we go to any extracurricular lessons. Neither child has ever been in ps, so I do not have much of a comparison. My parents never helped me with my homework. Per family rules, I completed most of it before they even came home from work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amiechoke Posted May 17, 2009 Share Posted May 17, 2009 Isn't there a happy medium? Keep some things daily, but stretch others out (two or three days before checking)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhonda in TX Posted May 17, 2009 Share Posted May 17, 2009 Looking just at math, that would be 10 math assignments for me to grade over the weekend. That doesn't include everything else! Of course, not everything needs to be graded, but I try to at least look over everything. I'll have to think about this. I can see that you would want to work towards this in some things (like writing assignments), but I don't know if it would work for everything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Samiam Posted May 17, 2009 Share Posted May 17, 2009 As usual, TWTM recommendations can be tweaked to work for your family. It is obvious you do not want to implement this idea as it is stated in the book. Then either forget it altogether or tweak it to work for you. One idea is to have a homework deadline twice a week, say Wed and Fri. Doing it Wed for Mon-Wed work gives you the chance to see that the child is doing the work, and doing it well. If any corrections/re-do's are to be done, that can be assigned for Thur-Fri, which you then check again on Fri. Either way, you shouldn't have much to do on the weekends, it's the CHILD would have to work on the weekends if their work wasn't done. But I think this whole idea was to be implemented for a older middle school grade right? Your children should be working quite a bit independently at that age, so you wouldn't have that much work during the week so start off with, depending on your curriculum. Secondly, it is usually quite apparent which subjects a child struggles in, so this particular subject might need to be checked daily, or on a different "turn-in" schedule than other subjects. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TxMama Posted May 17, 2009 Share Posted May 17, 2009 ] I moved to weekly assignments for my teens. All work had to be completed by Friday at 1pm or they didn't go to the weekly homeschool teen activity. I didn't teach as much as discuss and review with my teens. My goal was for them to be self-motivated and be responsible for their education. I did not have to "teach" during the summer and I didn't need a break from schoolwork because our "discuss and review" just became a part of our day like eating. If there was something that I needed to teach then it was on my schedule and not on their weekly schedule. These were always completed in a timely manner. :tongue_smilie: I was available to help them during certain hours of the day. No coming to mama at 8pm asking about algebra homework! I did not grade daily work, ie. math. I let them grade and correct their daily work. For any subject they used a textbook I just graded the tests. I did not schedule their week or their day. I forget the specifics but science went weekly first around 7th grade. By highschool most subjects were weekly or biweekly assignments depending on how often tests/papers needed to be done. If they did poorly on tests or were obviously just not getting it ( as opposed to just not getting it done) a subject could become daily with more mom involvement. Mom involved subjects were completed early in the day so there was some motivation to keeping subjects on their timetable.:lol: If they were just not getting it done then their social life came to a halt until they completed the work. My kids are social enough that this was a big motivating factor to get their work done. hth Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.