A 4th grade neighbor girl came by the other day to ask if I could help her with some homework. After looking through the packet (mostly worksheets stapled together), I could see why she was confused. The assignments were badly written, with unclear directions and no clear objectives--and in some cases no good answer available. For example, one page asked students to read pairs of words and mark whether they were antonyms or synonyms. Some of the pairs included were credit/debt; tax/payment; settler/immigrant; colony/community. To my mind, NONE of those pairs are clearly synonyms or antonyms. The words may be related, and even in some cases interchangeable, but the correlation between, say, settler and immigrant, or colony and community, really does not match any definition of synonym I'm familiar with (and they obviously are not antonyms). As for credit and debt, or tax and payment...I won't even get started!
Another friend showed me her son's kindergarten homework packet, and I was even less impressed. His assignments ranged from memorizing spelling words for a test (spelling tests in kindergarten?!) to coloring all the squares on a page red and all the circles yellow. The spelling words, by the way, included such whoppers as "without" and "through"--words I might expect to see on, say, a third-grade level. Which of course made the "color the shapes" page seem even more ridiculous; if a child at the end of kindergarten doesn't yet know the difference between a circle and a square, I don't think a worksheet is the way to teach it. And for the vast majority of children who have no trouble recognizing such shapes, the page was pure busywork and a waste of good time.
Honestly, I don't see the point of sending this kind of work home with children--they've already spent hours doing similar things in the classroom, let them come home and spend time with their families or riding their bikes. Please give them a chance to be kids!
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According to my Oxford Compact Thesaurus, settler and immigrant are synonyms as well as community and colony, and I must side with it.
I agree with you on the rest of the post though :P
I totally agree with the homework thing and it is another reason why we homeschool too :)
I guess my issue with settler/immigrant and community/colony is that they are synonymous only in very restricted situations; useful to find in a thesaurus, maybe, where you might go to look for a word with a similar meaning, but not very useful for teaching children that synonyms are words that mean the same or nearly the same thing. You might be able to interchange community and colony when talking about a group of ants, but not when talking about, say, the 13 American colonies. And "settler" and "immigrant" might be exchangeable when talking about the California Gold Rush, but not when talking about current immigration issues in the United States. I just don't think they are good example for teaching the concept of "synonym".
It sounds to me like you're constraining the words to specific definitions, which is good is some cases, such as in science, but it's also important to realize that words can mean a variety of things -- and thank goodness they do, language would be rather unpoetic if we restricted words to one definition only. I personally don't see the problem with either of those sets of synonyms.
That is so pathetic. I got frustrated just reading about those synonyms and antonyms. How many times I spot teachers making simple mistakes in usage, as well. I remember my third grade teacher used to spell "shepherd" as shepard. And I was in third grade and I noitced it. So sad..(I apologize for any spelling mistakes I made, because for some reason I can no longer see my comments as I am typing them. It's very annoyinng...
A.M.E.N.
Matt may complain that he doesn't want to do something that he's doing for homeschool, but at least I very seldom give him busywork. Ugh! How can teachers justify sending stupid stuff like that home? They still have to grade it, so it waste's the kids' time AND their's.
I actually agree with you on this post 100%. And I feel so sorry for those children who have very little support at home and therefore no advocate when it comes to what is really just busywork.
I'll be honest, I am a public school teacher's nightmare. I am constantly changing Gavin's homework. He too comes home with a packet every week, but I don't have him do the things I think are just busywork. Sometimes I just let him skip it, other times I change the assignment completely and have him do something more meaningful and helpful for him personally. I've never had the teacher say anything...yet :) But I'm not too worried about it either.
Just last week Gavin came home with a "project" assignment to build the workplace of a community helper from a shoebox. I thought it was ridiculous. The assignment paper said on it that the child would receive a Social Studies grade for the project, and late projects would get a lower score. I had parents calling me all stressed out saying they'd spent tons of money buying little knick knacks to go inside and countless hours putting it together. As for me, I couldn't have cared less. They can't scare me...What, are they going to hold back my child if he doesn't do it? In the end we did do it, but our "firehouse" was just a shoebox covered in red construction paper.
In one of my teaching courses at BYU, I had a professor tell us how his teenage daughter came home from the first day of school with a workbook she would have to complete that year. After flipping through it he decided it was total busy work and that she wouldn't learn a thing by finishing it. So he used his teaching credential to order the answer key, and then handed it to her. I am sure I will someday do the same thing. Even now, sometimes I'll color Gavin's homework for him while he reads to me. Much more productive use of our time :)
Amber, Gavin is very lucky to have a mother who is ready and willing to advocate for him. I also know you do a lot of teaching and learning enrichment at home. I am convinced that those factors are key to a child's education no matter where there official "schooling" takes place.
I hope you're sitting down right now because after some of our conversations this may flat out shock you....
I've been doing a lot of research on homeschooling programs, have met with people who keep the children's school records (I don't know what they're called) and am doing all I can to prepare myself for the possibility that I may become so fed up with the public school system that I pull my kids out. The day is not now, or even tomorrow, but I have seen that it very well may be in the near future so I better get prepared.
Although to be honest, I'm really hoping that day doesn't come. I think Gavin and Carson would kill each other! They're driving me nuts as it is.
Amber,
No, I'm not shocked--the amount of thought you put into discussing the benefits of public school demonstrates you are thinking critically about your children's education--and examining and considering all available options is part of that process.
How long is your summer break? That might give you a chance to try out some homeschooling methods and ideas.
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