how do you determine what's busywork...

[angelmama1209]

and what is actually aiding in learning and retention?

[regentrude]

By observing whether my student needs the activity for mastery and retention, and whether he is engaged with the activity.

Just to give you a few examples:

If the student gets all math problems on his daily work correctly, more problems of the same level would be just busy work; what he needs for learning are more challenging problems that go beyond a mere recall of the facts and require thinking and problem solving, or a new concept.

When a student can spell all the spelling words of the week correctly at the first try, any further practice of these words is busy work.

When a student is reading, and I can have a conversation about his book that shows me that he clearly comprehends what he is reading, multiple choice comprehension questions are busywork.

 

I have found that all "curricula" contain vast amounts of busy work not needed for my students, and consequently, I am not using any pre-made curricula except for a math text (and with one math curriculum, it required a lot of tweaking and cutting to eliminate needless drill&kill)

[FriedClams]

When my kids were little, I tried really hard to make sure we didn't have a lot of redundancy (and I still do). I would say I lean more Charlotte Mason style than purely classical, so I was a huge fan of short, specific lessons.

 

For little ones - I thought most worksheet type thing was busywork beyond specific math and handwriting practice. Everything else we did hands on or orally. First Language Lessons is a great example of that. We used it for 1st and 2nd - and it's mostly oral. By 3rd grade we switched to CLE with lots of writing, but what they learned in FLL stuck and CLE 3 was a breeze for both kids. History - we read, narrated, and had fun. I never consider reading aloud busywork - so we read and read and read. But stuff like "glue this here" or scissor drills we skipped in lieu of art and making crafty stuff. We have never used flash cards. We did play a few educational games - but mostly they were just fun stuff (Sheppard software, Jump In, etc.)

 

ETA - We used Horizons math and have always done every problem, every day. I think math requires constant practice. I think if the kids get it - it should be easy and fast for them to do all the problems.

 

HTH!

[regentrude]

 I think math requires constant practice. I think if the kids get it - it should be easy and fast for them to do all the problems.

OTOH, if a kid consistently gets every math problem correct, the curriculum is too easy for this student.

 

You might want to check out Richard Ruszyk's discussions about math education and the "tyranny of the 100%".

[KeriJ]

:bigear:   This is what has been bugging me trying to figure out lately. 

[jenniferp8]

By observing whether my student needs the activity for mastery and retention, and whether he is engaged with the activity.

Just to give you a few examples:

If the student gets all math problems on his daily work correctly, more problems of the same level would be just busy work; what he needs for learning are more challenging problems that go beyond a mere recall of the facts and require thinking and problem solving, or a new concept.

When a student can spell all the spelling words of the week correctly at the first try, any further practice of these words is busy work.

When a student is reading, and I can have a conversation about his book that shows me that he clearly comprehends what he is reading, multiple choice comprehension questions are busywork.

 

I have found that all "curricula" contain vast amounts of busy work not needed for my students, and consequently, I am not using any pre-made curricula except for a math text (and with one math curriculum, it required a lot of tweaking and cutting to eliminate needless drill&kill)

 

Agree. I think it's a careful balance between keeping them challenged and engaged and watching when it just becomes "more of the same" and they really already know it.

[FriedClams]

Another thing I thought of... If it looks like it's designed to keep kids quiet in a classroom - skip it :-)

[Tanikit]

I find that what is usually classified as busywork is helpful in teaching other things - for my first grader that means using easier Math that she will not sruggle with (busywork) to teach her neat set up, how to rule lines with a ruler, how to space work so it is readable - and while these skills could perhaps be taught by copywork that focuses on neat handwriting, I find that there is more of an independence when using "busywork" which prevents just copying and causes my child to think about her page layout - adding this to non busywork would be too much and yet it translates very very quickly.

 

The only other thing that busywork can do is make a child feel that sometimes school can be easy and quick - some tasks in adult life are easy and quick (and some of them are easy, quick and boring). I actually plan to give my elder a color by number picture as part of school at some stage - it is pure busywork, but I think she will enjoy it - I have been tempted to give her one that uses subtraction sums or some other maths to solve which color to use and that too would be busywork for her - but she might actually enjoy making the picture and the fact that it is easy would be fine.

 

Nonetheless I wouldn't do as much of this as happens in schools - I think there is place for some, but the amount should vary depending on your child and what works for them. 

[pitterpatter]

I struggle with busywork vs. true learning too.

 

After months of having DD work her way through various Evan-Moor books for LA this year, I recently realized just how much of it is/was busywork.

 

For example, there were 18 pages of antonyms in one book alone!! Good golly, antonyms are just words with opposite meanings. This concept was not difficult for DD. If I don't watch myself, I get stuck in the mind-frame that you have to complete every part of a curriculum or it's somehow cheating. :p Topics in several of the books overlapped. DD really didn't need to cover antonyms for a second and third time, so I started culling. I trimmed a couple of months worth of work! Crazy!!

 

I also recently dumped an Evan-Moor book for reading comprehension. It was the same five or so skills taught over and over all year. They just rotated them each week. One day, I was just like, what the heck are we doing?! They were good skills, but talk about beating a dead horse.

 

Now, I like Evan-Moor and I think the instruction in most of these books was good (although some things were too dumbed down), but I'm choosing curriculum that is more economical time-wise next year.

 

Another thing I think is a waste of time...DD taking 15-20 minutes to write sentences for something that she can answer orally in 15-20 seconds. Writing has it's place, but if the sentence-writing isn't important, I just have DD narrate to me.

 

ETA: At the same time, it's a fine line. You can't assume one repetition is enough. Even if a child gets something the first time, can you really just trot through curriculum hitting each topic one time in a minimal way? Not in my opinion. 

[regentrude]

ETA: At the same time, it's a fine line. You can't assume one repetition is enough. Even if a child gets something the first time, can you really just trot through curriculum hitting each topic one time in a minimal way? Not in my opinion. 

 

And that is extremely dependent on the child, and also on the age at which a child is exposed to the concept.

Some kids need pages and pages of practice and need to revisit the topic every year to remember the parts of speech. With other kids, once you explain to them what a verb is (or an antonym, as in your example), they remember - without practice. Sometimes a concept that would take great difficulty to retain if exposed too early will simply fall into place when introduced later.

 

I would also want to make a distinction between simple knowledge and skills. Skills must be practice to become fluent and automatic - hand writing, arithmetic.

[stripe]

ETA - We used Horizons math and have always done every problem, every day. I think math requires constant practice. I think if the kids get it - it should be easy and fast for them to do all the problems.

I think if a kid gets it, the problem should be something that is neither easy nor fast for them to do, but something intriguing and different than what they've done before. If it's easy and fast, it's too easy.

[FO4UR]

The purpose of busywork is to simply keep a kid busy, nothing more.

 

 

If the work is building fluency, teaching a concept or providing an assessment, then it isn't busywork.  We can then argue if it's more profitable to combine multiple things into one assignment (arithmetic fluency with following written directions, for ex.)...but it isn't busywork if it has a purpose beyond keeping the kids busy.

 

 

 

We do plenty of busywork here.  Lego, crafting, Parcheesi...  :lol:

[angelmama1209]

I struggle with busywork vs. true learning too.

 

After months of having DD work her way through various Evan-Moor books for LA this year, I recently realized just how much of it is/was busywork.

 

For example, there were 18 pages of antonyms in one book alone!! Good golly, antonyms are just words with opposite meanings. This concept was not difficult for DD. If I don't watch myself, I get stuck in the mind-frame that you have to complete every part of a curriculum or it's somehow cheating. :p Topics in several of the books overlapped. DD really didn't need to cover antonyms for a second and third time, so I started culling. I trimmed a couple of months worth of work! Crazy!!

 

I also recently dumped an Evan-Moor book for reading comprehension. It was the same five or so skills taught over and over all year. They just rotated them each week. One day, I was just like, what the heck are we doing?! They were good skills, but talk about beating a dead horse.

 

Now, I like Evan-Moor and I think the instruction in most of these books was good (although some things were too dumbed down), but I'm choosing curriculum that is more economical time-wise next year.

 

Another thing I think is a waste of time...DD taking 15-20 minutes to write sentences for something that she can answer orally in 15-20 seconds. Writing has it's place, but if the sentence-writing isn't important, I just have DD narrate to me.

 

ETA: At the same time, it's a fine line. You can't assume one repetition is enough. Even if a child gets something the first time, can you really just trot through curriculum hitting each topic one time in a minimal way? Not in my opinion. 

my research of evan moor books is exactly what prompted my wondering. i have also had the thought about scholastic books. i do have a few em books in my cart, but i found the majority of them felt like busywork, at least alongside our other curric. i like independent work. it gives me time to work with the youngers, but i don't want to give her stuff just for the sake of filling time.

[pitterpatter]

Sure, but it's important to be sure our children really get it...to be sure they're completing quality work. There's a difference between asking a child to circle the nouns in sentences on a worksheet about nouns, and asking a child to define noun and then provide examples of nouns. Or, to ask a child to come up with a sentence that used two nouns. I think a lot of kids could circle all day long, but not necessarily tell you otherwise. And then, of course, there's short-term versus long-term memory. If you hit nouns at the beginning of the year and never mention the term again, will the child remember at the end? Nouns might not be a great example because I'm not sure how one could get through a whole year of LA without hitting it more than once in some way. Antonyms might be a better example.

 

Of course, these things are reviewed every year.

 

 

And that is extremely dependent on the child, and also on the age at which a child is exposed to the concept.

Some kids need pages and pages of practice and need to revisit the topic every year to remember the parts of speech. With other kids, once you explain to them what a verb is (or an antonym, as in your example), they remember - without practice. Sometimes a concept that would take great difficulty to retain if exposed too early will simply fall into place when introduced later.

 

I would also want to make a distinction between simple knowledge and skills. Skills must be practice to become fluent and automatic - hand writing, arithmetic.

 

[pitterpatter]

Well, the one thing about Evan-Moor is that with the LA books anyway, after a few short minutes of going over a rule or topic and then working a few questions, a lot of it is very independent, especially when the child is on the second or third day of working on a topic. DD often completes her Evan-Moor pages while I finish up simple tasks around the house (i.e. clean up breakfast). The rules are explained well, but don't always use specific terminology (i.e. they say "asking sentence" instead of interrogative sentence).

 

This was our first year studying grammar, punctuation, usage, etc. I didn't know how well DD would do. She picked it up quickly, so I think doing every single worksheet was a bit much. Having said that, I have no idea how well she would have done had we used a minimalist approach. We are doing something very different next year, so we shall see. (LLTL, Easy Grammar and Elson, in case you're wondering...much more teacher-intensive.)

 

My thought about grammar is to err on too much versus not enough. While I was a good student, my public school LA education left me grossly unprepared for college...particularly in regard to grammar. Funny thing, though, I was light years ahead of half the students who apparently got "left behind" and never learned how to write. That's not to say I didn't do well in college, just that I felt dumb a lot...felt like I should have already learned certain things before that point. Heck, I'm still learning things for the first time with DD (i.e. tons of history and literature).

 

 

my research of evan moor books is exactly what prompted my wondering. i have also had the thought about scholastic books. i do have a few em books in my cart, but i found the majority of them felt like busywork, at least alongside our other curric. i like independent work. it gives me time to work with the youngers, but i don't want to give her stuff just for the sake of filling time.

 

[Farrar]

I think we all talk about it like it's obvious on some level.  They need to be engaged, they need to be challenged, it needs to not be repetitive, it needs to have a specific purpose, etc.  And I don't disagree with that.  But I also think that sometimes you don't know until later.  There have been times that I thought my kids were really getting something out of a book...  only to turn out they retained nothing.  And there have been other times that we decided to skip large parts of things because it looked like busy work to me or because it seemed like my kids had really mastered that material, only to realize down the road that they hadn't mastered it, or like it might have contained skill work that I wasn't seeing on the surface.  So I think you muddle through and do the best you can.  When a child is complaining of boredom or simply flying through things, you stop and examine, of course, but you also accept that you may get it wrong sometimes.

[regentrude]

 Antonyms might be a better example.

 

Of course, these things are reviewed every year.

 

But that is exactly what I mean. One very possible approach could also be to skip covering antonyms every.single.year and simply cover the concept once, maybe in 6th grade, when they are able to remember. After all, there is absolutely nothing difficult conceptually about antonyms that would require practice - of course kids know that hot and cold are opposites. All the effort is made to teach them one single word, the term "antonym", for a concept that is easy to understand. Why repeat that every year?

 

As for your example with verbs: why is it necessary that kids practice the definition, list examples, construct a sentence with two verbs when the only thing that really matters is that they know that every sentence requires one and that they can apply this knowledge in their own writing? I sometimes scratch my head why concepts that are completely logical and intuitive to an older student are drummed into elementary kids with yearly repetitions. Why not wait until they get it and teach it once? I don't reteach content in math yearly either - we teach once to mastery and thorough conceptual understanding, when the student is prepared and ready, and that leads to long term retention.

[pitterpatter]

Perhaps...I don't claim to be an expert. This is my first time around the homeschooling block, but I bet you that if I were to do a little "Jay-Walking" (as in the Jay Leno segment), a vast portion of the population wouldn't be able to define antonym or provide you with an example. And, I'm sure they likely learned the term at least once in high school. I think the multiple impressions is to ensure that a child doesn't forget the term. I "learned" all kinds of terms in college that made sense at the time, but I sure don't remember them now. Or, not without a lot of real thoughtful thinking.

 

What I love about homeschooling is that everyone can teach how they think is best for their individual child. We all have different agendas too. What makes sense to me, may not make sense to others and vice versa. I'm not sure what I would teach DD now if I waited to teach her everything in middle and high school.

 

 

But that is exactly what I mean. One very possible approach could also be to skip covering antonyms every.single.year and simply cover the concept once, maybe in 6th grade, when they are able to remember. After all, there is absolutely nothing difficult conceptually about antonyms that would require practice - of course kids know that hot and cold are opposites. All the effort is made to teach them one single word, the term "antonym", for a concept that is easy to understand. Why repeat that every year?

 

As for your example with verbs: why is it necessary that kids practice the definition, list examples, construct a sentence with two verbs when the only thing that really matters is that they know that every sentence requires one and that they can apply this knowledge in their own writing? I sometimes scratch my head why concepts that are completely logical and intuitive to an older student are drummed into elementary kids with yearly repetitions. Why not wait until they get it and teach it once? I don't reteach content in math yearly either - we teach once to mastery and thorough conceptual understanding, when the student is prepared and ready, and that leads to long term retention.

 

[HS Mom in NC]

1. Is this assignment, exercise, content, helping to meet any of my goals? Keep in mind both short and long term goals.

 

If the answer is no, then you can probably skip it.

 

Everyone's goals are different.  If your goal is to practice memorizing things related to history, for the sake of practicing memorizing things, then memorizing the Egyptian dynasties might make sense in your situation.  If your goal is memorize things you expect your child to use regularly, memorizing the Egyptian dynasties doesn't make much sense. Find something else to memorize that better helps you reach your goals.

 

2. Has my child already mastered this?

 

If the answer is yes, then you can skip it.  Be sure you understand that mastery is long term. It also implies your child can apply knowledge to different situations as needed.  Check later that your child still knows how to do it well.

 

3.  Is this particular assignment high quality enough to invest our time and energy in?

 

If the answer is no you can skip it entirely if it's not worth learning at all or you can replace it with something else of higher quality that teaches the same content a better way or teaches more content more efficiently.

 

Generally speaking, expanding a child's vocabulary is better done by reading lots of high quality children's literature than it is using vocabulary worksheets.  Literature puts vocabulary in context and gives excellent examples in a delightful way.  It also adds in excellent examples of grammar, verbal imagery and a wider range of ideas.  It develops attention spans and trains the ear for grammar.  Vocabulary worksheets by comparison are a clumsy way to teach vocabulary in general and you only get vocabulary out of it-not the rich tapestry of integrated, delight driven learning literature does.

Are there times a list of vocabulary learned before a particular section of study makes sense?  Yes.  As a matter of course is it the best way to do it most of the time in most situations?  No.

 

4. Can my child apply this concept to his/her other studies that require this kind of knowledge? 
 

If it's math, your child should be able to build new skills on top of the ones (s)he's mastered. (S)he should be able to make up their own examples and explain them in their own words.  They should be able to apply it in real life situations as they come up. 

 

If it's grammar, your child should be able to write original sentences, paragraphs and papers using grammar mastered in grammar assignments.

 

5. Is repetition at this point necessary or helpful in some way? Do I need reinforcement from another angle?

Some kids just need more repetition than other kids do to master something..  Some need the same concept explained or demonstrated various ways before they really get it.  If it's just more of the same and it's not connecting with the child, then it's time to skip it and shift gears for a new angle on the content.

6. Is my child's brain not developed enough for this right now?

 

If you think the answer might be yes, you may want to hold off until later and try again when they better understand more abstract ideas or more complex content. 

We all know newbies and a few veterans that just can't seem to believe that holding off on teaching reading until later (7-9 or so ) can save all sorts of time and energy even though lots of veterans have seen it in their own kids and other people's kids first hand.  That doesn't mean never introducing it and giving it a go in the 4-6 or so age range depending on the child's interest.  It means happily trying for a couple of weeks and happily dropping it for several months if it isn't working out and happily trying again later, ready to happily drop it if necessary and waiting for several months before trying it again.

 

(Frankly, I'm tired of being lectured by people homeschooling their 4-5 year olds for the last 6-12 months about how important it is to bang away at it for years for the sake of character or for the love of academics. )

 

7. Do I understand that children learn in peaks and plateaus?

 

No one learns everything at the same rate.  They don't have to do the same amount of work every single day in a subject.  They may need to do more at times and less at times as long as it's for a good reason.

It's not unusual for kids to learn the letter sounds quickly, but need to wait a while before they can even hear, much less do, blending.  When they can, blending may go slower or faster than memorizing the letter sounds.

[pitterpatter]

So true! And, I don't think one can always tell what has been mastered until long down the road...after basic studies have ceased.

 

 

I think we all talk about it like it's obvious on some level.  They need to be engaged, they need to be challenged, it needs to not be repetitive, it needs to have a specific purpose, etc.  And I don't disagree with that.  But I also think that sometimes you don't know until later.  There have been times that I thought my kids were really getting something out of a book...  only to turn out they retained nothing.  And there have been other times that we decided to skip large parts of things because it looked like busy work to me or because it seemed like my kids had really mastered that material, only to realize down the road that they hadn't mastered it, or like it might have contained skill work that I wasn't seeing on the surface.  So I think you muddle through and do the best you can.  When a child is complaining of boredom or simply flying through things, you stop and examine, of course, but you also accept that you may get it wrong sometimes.

 

[stripe]

I think if it's the annual antonym round up, most kids tune out. That's why they don't learn it: because it was boring and repeated all the time, and clearly no one thought it was worth learning, hence the perceived need to review. 

 

I have decided to start giving my kids more things to keep them busy, but it's with the idea that it will be at least one of: fun, interesting, or educational. So a logic puzzle would be an example. If it's none of those, then it's a bit worrisome if that's a big part of the day. And if it makes kids hate "school," or the topic at hand (e.g. aggressive multiplication drills that the kid hates), then it's a negative, as far as I'm concerned. No problem with learning multiplication, but not with making a kid hate math.