not be be catty -- (re Public school) -- or am i really slacking

[momma aimee]

what do they do all day?

 

I have my boys carrying a fairly "average" load, i feel. they could maybe do more, and i hope to do more by Spring and again next year.

 

I know a lot of families that do a lot less.

 

We get school done in about 2.5 hours (with a short break for me to switch stuff around and for them to jump around).

 

We do read more later, that i do not count in the 2.5, but that is something i would do even if they were not home educated.

 

so, not to be horrible -- but what do the kids at school do all day? my oldest is in first this year but sadly our district has gone to all day kindy too -- 8 to 3. school doesn't start till 8:25 BUT breakfast starts at 8:05 and the "strongly encourage" all student to come for breakfast as "many of the teachers plan their day starting at 8:10 in the cafertieria".

 

I am just wondering -- am i really slacking that much -- should we be hitting the book more?

 

I really and not seeing the time difference.

 

Aimee

[alisoncooks]

As a former 1st grade teacher...

 

PS kids do a LOT more worksheets & busywork than their homeschooled counterparts. And a lot of sitting -- whispering with their neighbors -- while the teacher helps a handful of students. Or waiting while behavioral issues are addressed. Or standing in line while the entire class takes turns using the restroom and getting water at the fountain...

 

Just for starters...

[regentrude]

My kids attended public school for several years. This is what it looked like:

 

take attendance

take down who brought lunch and who will eat school lunch

listen to announcements

say the Pledge of Allegiance

 

* get everybody settled in their seats

get everybody to have their books and sheets and pencils ready

remind student A not to kick his neighbor

remind student B, C and D not to talk

say the instructions

repeat the instructions

make sure everybody understood the instructions

redirect wandering attention of students E,F and G

answer question of students H and J who did not listen to the instructions

collect papers

notice that students K,L and M did not follow the instructions

have them redo, while class waits

collect papers again

 

Bathroom break

line up, lead complete class, kids take turns

get everybody to settle in their seats....back to *

 

You get the idea. A lot of busy work, a lot of crowd management. A lot of wasted time.

[besroma]

Our school day was just about ideal yesterday.

 

Today, it resembled a PS day! We have a large family and I spent more time today keeping them on task and getting the little ones out of messes, that we spent several hours getting little accomplished.

 

It is great that you are getting so much accomplished in that amount of time.

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

Thank you for posting this! I was just thinking the same thoughts yesterday!

[Roadrunner]

I can tell you from the limited volunteering experience what happened in 1st grade class.

8:40 to 9:00 (attendance, who brought lunch, pledge, etc...)

9:00 to 10:30 - kids were separated into 4 different groups (1 group did writing, another group worked on science reading, another group worked on phonics/spelling and the last group worked with the teacher correcting writing and working on reading). Class has a teacher, one parent and one teacher's aide so everybody but a group writing at their desks had an adult supervision.

10:30 -10:45 - recess

10:45 - 11:45 - Math time (new material, lots of worksheets....)

11:45 - 12:30 - another writing block

12:30 - 1:15 - lunch

1:15 - 1:30 - reading (silent reading. Kids picked up books anything they wanted from shelves and just read).

1:30 to 3:00 - two more classes. They were different each day. Sometimes P.E. and Spanish, sometimes Social Studies and Computer Lab, sometimes Science and Spanish....

I guess when you are dealing with 20 kids, it takes a looong time :001_smile:

[Peaceful Isle]

Having 20 plus kiddos in your class and trying to teach, and maintain some sort of order is hard and takes lots of patience.

Ask me how I know :D

Anyways, I agree with the above posts. My days as a teacher filled up pretty quickly. Along with the regular subjects, there was journal time, lunch break, bathroom breaks, taking attendance, lunch money collection, passing forward last night's homework... Oh, and don't forget play practice, every afternoon for a month before the production.

I am so glad I homeschool now :) I do miss those kiddos...well, not the one who always threw over his desk on the floor and cursed at me,...but anyhoo!

[momma aimee]

i just wanted to be sure i was not totally slacking (2.5 is about average, there are days that take longer -- like "sit down please, pick up your pencil please" after every math problem) -- glad to know i am not alone ....

[TracyR]

My kids attended public school for several years. This is what it looked like:

 

take attendance

take down who brought lunch and who will eat school lunch

listen to announcements

say the Pledge of Allegiance

 

* get everybody settled in their seats

get everybody to have their books and sheets and pencils ready

remind student A not to kick his neighbor

remind student B, C and D not to talk

say the instructions

repeat the instructions

make sure everybody understood the instructions

redirect wandering attention of students E,F and G

answer question of students H and J who did not listen to the instructions

collect papers

notice that students K,L and M did not follow the instructions

have them redo, while class waits

collect papers again

 

Bathroom break

line up, lead complete class, kids take turns

get everybody to settle in their seats....back to *

 

You get the idea. A lot of busy work, a lot of crowd management. A lot of wasted time.

:iagree:

This is what I noticed. My girls went to private school and that about sums it all up. Most of the time its kids getting in line and not being quiet when the teacher asks. My girls were always irritated with the kids that would talk over the teachers when they were teaching as well.

 

There is more crowd management and disciplining than actual working. If you add it all up as to how much school work they do , it would probably be as much or not as much as we do at home. Actually even though we've been pretty 'lax' we do more, in less time. Last year my 12 yr old had very little social studies. The year before my oldest did Grammar three times the whole year. So yah, we do more even when doing less.

[prairiewindmomma]

Your kids are still young. The workload will pick up as they get older... My 5th grader does have 5-6 full hours of schoolwork now plus an hour of free reading.

[slackermom]

DD's PS seems to make decent use of their time, given that there are 20+ kids in the room. I think even 20 adults would be hard pressed to stay on task for 6 hours in that environment.

 

The schedule is basically this:

 

Morning meeting (15 min)

Block 1: Math 5x/wk

Block 2: Reading 5x/wk (Reading group or independent reading)

Block 3: Writing 5x/wk (Journals with various prompts)

Lunch&Recess (30 min)

Block 4: Art, Library, Health, other

Block 5: Science 3x/wk, Social Studies 2x/wk

Afternoon meeting (15 min)

 

The Morning meeting deals with business (attendance, announcements, etc). They have 5 one hour blocks, with about 10 minutes of each hour dealing with transitions. Sometimes the blocks are switched around a bit, so half the class is working on reading while the other half works on writing. They use journals (reader response, poetry, science observations, etc.) much more than worksheets.

[regentrude]

DD's PS seems to make decent use of their time, given that there are 20+ kids in the room. I think even 20 adults would be hard pressed to stay on task for 6 hours in that environment.

 

The schedule is basically this:

 

Morning meeting (15 min)

Block 1: Math 5x/wk

Block 2: Reading 5x/wk (Reading group or independent reading)

Block 3: Writing 5x/wk (Journals with various prompts)

Lunch&Recess (30 min)

Block 4: Art, Library, Health, other

Block 5: Science 3x/wk, Social Studies 2x/wk

Afternoon meeting (15 min)

 

The Morning meeting deals with business (attendance, announcements, etc). They have 5 one hour blocks, with about 10 minutes of each hour dealing with transitions. Sometimes the blocks are switched around a bit, so half the class is working on reading while the other half works on writing. They use journals (reader response, poetry, science observations, etc.) much more than worksheets.

 

The schedule certainly looks nice - my kids' school had a schedule like this as well. But the real question is: how long does the actual work take? My kids were usually done after a few minutes and spent the larger part of the period sitting around waiting for the class to finish.

So, even if there is a schedule that says "one hour of math", how long does it take to actually do the problems? In our (quite good) elementary school, there were 10-15 minutes of actual work hidden in a whole hour of "class".

[Roadrunner]

The schedule certainly looks nice - my kids' school had a schedule like this as well. But the real question is: how long does the actual work take? My kids were usually done after a few minutes and spent the larger part of the period sitting around waiting for the class to finish.

So, even if there is a schedule that says "one hour of math", how long does it take to actually do the problems? In our (quite good) elementary school, there were 10-15 minutes of actual work hidden in a whole hour of "class".

 

We had such a wonderful teacher last year. She had extra work on math (computer or worksheets) or reading assignments and made sure nobody sad idle. We just started a new school year and the second grade classroom is not running the same. So, yes, depending on the teacher this is a real problem. My son read a huge chunk of his book he took from home yesterday in the classroom (idle time). :(

[regentrude]

We had such a wonderful teacher last year. She had extra work on math (computer or worksheets) or reading assignments and made sure nobody sad idle. We just started a new school year and the second grade classroom is not running the same. So, yes, depending on the teacher this is a real problem. My son read a huge chunk of his book he took from home yesterday in the classroom (idle time). :(

 

My kids' teachers were nice and were all very willing to accommodate them, but the reality was that they did not have the time and energy to find them meaningful assignments. I do not blame them; the reward structure for teachers is such that any time spent with strong students is not rewarded, only efforts made at the lowest performing end of the class. My DD spent five years reading fiction for several hours daily in class with teachers' permission and was bored out of her mind. She could have completed the actual work in under one hours. Which is why we home school now.

[HejKatt]

..She could have completed the actual work in under one hours. Which is why we home school now.

 

regentrude, I know you went to school in East Germany, and I suppose the class sizes were equivalent or larger. Do you remember your school having the same amount of busy work?

 

My experience - Asian school, class size 30-40 students. Some time spent with announcements, pledge in the morning. But the rest you mentioned - talking, not following instructions - not existent, we had very strict rules and enforcement.

 

I wasn't accelerated, so I can't comment how the teachers handled students who finished ahead of time but it seems like our class time was lecture-style, then we went home and did the homework (which usually included some fiendishly hard problems, so it took up a lot of our day). So again, I'm not seeing the opportunity for students to hold up others with their rate of work. But maybe it's just limited to my school/country.

[TriciaS]

My daughter went to K and 1st in PS. Kindergarten is a lot of small group stuff while the other kids rotate through "centers". 1st was a lot of time spent on just keeping the kids in line, keeping them quiet, helping the kids who were struggling. I basically was told by her teacher (who I really liked), that she didn't even know what to do with my daughter because she wasn't struggling in anything and was beyond where the rest of the class was in reading. The teacher had to deal with all these kids not caught up.

 

And I have an issue with giving kids extra work because they are able to finish fast. That's like a punishment! When I told my daughter's teacher we were going to homeschool, she told me that was really the best thing we could do for my daughter because the PS system would never be able to give her what we can! Then she cleaned out her cabinets and gave me all sorts of textbooks to have for references! :D

[foxbridgeacademy]

"crowd management".... lol.

 

Last year we spent about 2 hours a day on "school" plus an additional 1/2 hour reading and another 1/2 hr to 1 hour on fun stuff.

This year kids are 6th and 4th grade. We are farming out Science and History (actually I am teaching a 1X per week class!). So I expect to do about 2.5 hrs of school 4X a week with another 1/2 hr for reading and 1/2 hr. for homework from the class. It's not the quantity but the quality of time spent that matters.

[regentrude]

regentrude, I know you went to school in East Germany, and I suppose the class sizes were equivalent or larger. Do you remember your school having the same amount of busy work?

 

 

Class size was 30 students. There was more actual content per time. Plus, far fewer discipline issues.

Also, school days in Germany were, and still are, shorter. Elementary school students in the younger grades get out between 11am and noon. That is the amount of concentrated work young kids can handle. So there is no filling the time until 3pm with worksheets for glorified babysitting. Kids who need it go to aftercare and actually play.

 

ETA: One thing that was/is very different: not every scrap of paper got graded. You had homework, and you might get in trouble if you did not do the homework which was spot checked, but grades solely relied on a small number of exams each semester. Not like here where each child generates grades for five different worksheets every single day. I feel for the poor teachers who have to grade all thus junk... and for the environment, with all these lose copies and worksheets that go in the garbage. We had books and notebooks. Period.

 

I wasn't accelerated, so I can't comment how the teachers handled students who finished ahead of time but it seems like our class time was lecture-style, then we went home and did the homework (which usually included some fiendishly hard problems, so it took up a lot of our day). So again, I'm not seeing the opportunity for students to hold up others with their rate of work. But maybe it's just limited to my school/country.

In Germany, we nowadays have tracking starting in 5th grade which helps tremendously. We did not have that in East Germany, but the whole education was with no frills, straight forward work and homework. Despite attending a school with special language instruction, I was still bored - but at elast school days were shorter and we got to go home at 2pm at the latest. Edited August 14, 2012 by regentrude

[Roadrunner]

regentrude, I know you went to school in East Germany, and I suppose the class sizes were equivalent or larger. Do you remember your school having the same amount of busy work?

 

My experience - Asian school, class size 30-40 students. Some time spent with announcements, pledge in the morning. But the rest you mentioned - talking, not following instructions - not existent, we had very strict rules and enforcement.

 

I wasn't accelerated, so I can't comment how the teachers handled students who finished ahead of time but it seems like our class time was lecture-style, then we went home and did the homework (which usually included some fiendishly hard problems, so it took up a lot of our day). So again, I'm not seeing the opportunity for students to hold up others with their rate of work. But maybe it's just limited to my school/country.

I am not Regentrude :001_smile: but also come from over the Atlantic. Our classes were set up as "lectures", so out of 45 minutes you had 20-25 minutes where kids were called up to the board and "examined" (I don't know what word to use here) and the rest of the class for a "lecture" on new material. We had no busy work at all. We had homework we completed. It's a completely different set up here.

 

We also got home sooner and actually had lunch at home.

[Wildiris]

Your kids are still young. The workload will pick up as they get older... My 5th grader does have 5-6 full hours of schoolwork now plus an hour of free reading.

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

[slackermom]

The schedule certainly looks nice - my kids' school had a schedule like this as well. But the real question is: how long does the actual work take? My kids were usually done after a few minutes and spent the larger part of the period sitting around waiting for the class to finish.

So, even if there is a schedule that says "one hour of math", how long does it take to actually do the problems? In our (quite good) elementary school, there were 10-15 minutes of actual work hidden in a whole hour of "class".

 

I suppose it depends on the activity and the child, and most certainly on the teacher. They did a lot of math activities or games, often working in small teams. They normally didn't spend x number of minutes doing "math problems," and rarely did worksheets, except to record results. And if DD had nothing to learn from the activity, and wanted to do math problems, she had the option of working on Kahn Academy or Primary Grade Challenge Math.

[MrsBanjoClown]

My son's 1st grade schedule looked like this:

7:30-8:00 - Arrival Time/Morning Activities

8:00-8:05 - Announcements

8:05-8:30 - Number Corner

8:30-9:00 - Math Concepts

9:00-9:30 - Literacy Workshop

9:30-10:30 - Monday: Computer Lab/Library

9:30-11:30 - Guided reading in groups

11:30-11:35 - Prepare for lunch

11:38-12:08 - Lunch

12:08-12:20 - Shared reading/writing

12:20-12:40 - Free play

12:40-1:00 - Language Arts

1:00-1:30 - Science/Social Studies

1:30-2:00 - Review/Enrichment/Reading Lab/Pack up for dismissal

2:00-3:00 - Music/P.E.

[HejKatt]

Class size was 30 students. There was more actual content per time. Plus, far fewer discipline issues.

 

ETA: One thing that was/is very different: not every scrap of paper got graded. You had homework, and you might get in trouble if you did not do the homework which was spot checked, but grades solely relied on a small number of exams each semester.

..

the whole education was with no frills, straight forward work and homework.

 

Our classes were set up as "lectures", so out of 45 minutes you had 20-25 minutes where kids were called up to the board and "examined" (I don't know what word to use here) and the rest of the class for a "lecture" on new material. We had no busy work at all. We had homework we completed. It's a completely different set up here.

 

Thank you for your responses, regentrude and Roadrunner! So often class size is cited here as a reason why our schools are declining, and I wanted to tease out some of the underlying variables. It seems like the practice/setup is key - if those are wasteful in time, then that waste multiplies per pupil.

 

So if I may apply your experiences to the OP's q about homeschool environments, the time savings are in:

1. No admin time

2. Fewer distractions from other students/children - well, younger siblings can be distracting but it is handled as part of the home environment.

3. Work is targeted to the level of the student : accelerated, or not

4. As a result of #3, no need to test and keep excessive records. Roadrunner gives a nice example of instant feedback as to whether the student understood the material.

5. Choice to have the material as content-rich as you are comfortable teaching.

 

I'm still thinking about the following:

- Setup: Do we benefit by having more lecture/instructional style?

- Frills: From regentrude's description. What are some examples, and could something be a frill in a classroom environment, but not in a homeschool environment ?

[Element]

I don't know about older grades, but I have volunteered many, many hours in K&1 classrooms and it was just daycare. Pretty, crafty daycare with lots of crowd- and body function-management. The only things I ever saw being taught were phonics, simple addition, and computer games involving phonics and simple addition. (I'm not necessarily saying a K-1 kid needs much more than that. It's just crazy that they have to be there for 8 hours.)

[raptor_dad]

Well here is a view of this from the Dept. of Education.

 

According to Rossmiller, a typical school year of 1,080 hours may result in as few as 364 hours of time on task, after deducting time for noninstructional activities, process activity (distributing material, keeping discipline), absenteeism, and other time not on task.

 

Such findings suggest that the emphasis should be placed on the quality, rather than the quantity, of the time spent in school. Administrators should strive to reduce the amount of school time that is either lost or diverted to noninstructional activities before extending the school day or year.

 

This study was from 1983 but do you believe things are substantially different now?

 

So 2hrs/day for a 180 day school year is about right.

 

Here is the ref for that study... I can't find the full text online.

 

Rossmiller, Richard A. "Time-on-Task: A Look at What Erodes Time for Instruction." NASSP BULLETIN 67 (October 1983):45-49.

[Paige]

My kids all went to PS first. They did a lot of stuff I wouldn't bother doing at home in addition to the loss of time for class transitions, redirection, and bathroom trips:

-silly songs just for fun as part of the school day (Tootie Ta, anyone?)

-busywork fillers such as coloring sheets as school work

-oral group work that takes longer because everyone is doing it. Things like -counting by 5s throwing a ball and such. We do that here too, but it takes much less time to do it with one kid.

-individual reading times at desk- we do that too, but in school, everyone read at their desks while the teacher worked one on one with a few individually. This took about an hour. My kids read too, but I don't count it as part of my school day.

-art, music, PE, library, computer lab- These 1hr class blocks happen every day (rotating). For computer at home, I counted it under whatever subject we were working on. I don't do computer just because. Music and art were covered, but not so much that I'd allot a daily hour to one of them. It was more like once a week for 20min or so. PE in our homeschool was done after school in sports/extra curricular classes.

- extras like lessons on bullying, being friends, stranger danger, and character are given an hour weekly at our school. At home, we call that parenting and it doesn't count as school.

[alisoncooks]

- extras like lessons on bullying, being friends, stranger danger, and character are given an hour weekly at our school. At home, we call that parenting and it doesn't count as school.

 

Not to mention formal lessons on dental health and personal hygiene...:rolleyes:

 

Yep, when I taught public school, instruction/introduction of a concept and group practice always took up a good part of the lesson. THEN they moved on to independent practice (aka worksheets or projects).

[momma aimee]

glad to know i am not short changing them or asking "too little" -- today we only did math and phonics (for both) and took about an hour -- but neither was at their best at 2 in the afternoon

[kiwik]

Sorry but I've been wondering - is there a particular reason you do such long hours and start so early? In New Zealand we start at 9 and finish at 3 until year 8 (about 12 yrs) and then have slightly longer hours at high school (approx 8.45 to 3.15). I think for 5 year olds 6 hours is a long time! Although they can finish at 2 for the first month or so.

[G5052]

Our local system does block scheduling, but transitions between classes, taking roll, collecting homework, handing out papers, etc. still takes a lot of time. My DC's friends say that you get maybe 40 minutes of actual instruction in a 1-block, and of course there are assemblies, fire drills, etc. etc.

 

Mine work only 8-4 most days which includes online classes, so even for high school it is much, much less. We mostly stay home during the week. It is rare that they have evening and weekend work that they still haven't finished. That's one reason I like homeschooling for high school. We still have the evenings for martial arts and family time.

[Matryoshka]

Your kids are still young. The workload will pick up as they get older... My 5th grader does have 5-6 full hours of schoolwork now plus an hour of free reading.

 

:iagree::iagree: Instructional time took up very little of our day when my kids were that young. We had lots of time for the park, walks, socializing, field trips. just playing.

 

By the time they were in middle school, I was wondering how we were ever going to finish all the work (of course, it didn't help that all their extracurriculars take up more time as they got older - instead of a 45 min ballet class once a week, it's 1.5 hours 3x a week - multiply by however many kids you have).

[MissKNG]

I think 2.5 hours is a good amount of time for your kiddos.

[Saille]

BUT breakfast starts at 8:05 and the "strongly encourage" all student to come for breakfast as "many of the teachers plan their day starting at 8:10 in the cafertieria"

 

This is the part that would bother me. Do parents get to pack a breakfast, or am I supposed to submit my kids to highly processed, high fat foods planned by a *dietician*, for Maude's sake, twice a day instead of just once? Bargh.

[skeeterbug]

That's one reason I like homeschooling for high school. We still have the evenings for martial arts and family time.

 

Because martial arts and family time go hand-in-hand. :lol:

 

:D

[snowbeltmom]

My kids' teachers were nice and were all very willing to accommodate them, but the reality was that they did not have the time and energy to find them meaningful assignments. I do not blame them; the reward structure for teachers is such that any time spent with strong students is not rewarded, only efforts made at the lowest performing end of the class. ...

This was our experience as well.

[Saille]

LOL

 

I wish they served high fat foods here. It's all junk carbs, low fat, and sugary.

 

:lol:

 

But I do catch your drift. ;)

 

When I taught PS, bits of zucchini and carrot inside deep fried bread nuggets (served with ranch dressing) counted as a vegetable. I believe it's still federally mandated to have two grains at each meal. Of course, one of them can be an enriched white roll full of HFCS, and the other can be white rice, but, you know, it's GRAIN!

 

Not to mention the overcooked, over buttered, over salted vegetables, hormone-filled meat and dairy...

 

I even hate the pulpy, storage-oriented Red Delicious apples. Gurgh.

 

/hijack

[MinivanMom]

When I taught PS, bits of zucchini and carrot inside deep fried bread nuggets (served with ranch dressing) counted as a vegetable. I believe it's still federally mandated to have two grains at each meal. Of course, one of them can be an enriched white roll full of HFCS, and the other can be white rice, but, you know, it's GRAIN!

 

Not to mention the overcooked, over buttered, over salted vegetables, hormone-filled meat and dairy...

 

I even hate the pulpy, storage-oriented Red Delicious apples. Gurgh.

 

/hijack

School lunches are bad enough. I can't imagine why anyone would encourage eating breakfast at school, unless it was a poverty-stricken school where the children didn't have access to food at home. At the school where I taught it honestly made me sick to walk through the lunchroom during breakfast. The planned breakfast menu rotated between French Toast Sticks, Corndogs (pancake wrapped around sausage), and Biscuits w/Gravy.

 

They also provided sugar cereal and chocolate milk at every breakfast. You know, because no child would ever be willing to drink plain milk. You would not believe the number of children who simply grabbed Cocoa Puffs and poured chocolate milk over them every.single.morning. :ack2: