Homework
The next step in evaluating your child’s learning situation is to assess his homework. Is it “busy work”? Some teachers assign their subject rather than teach it. As with most any learned area, practice and repetition are proven methods. However, there must be procedural learning — i.e., a step by step process followed in the practice (homework) exercises which is designed to reinforce the teaching in the classroom. For example, if I teach students the simple first steps of how to diagram subjects and verbs and then assign sentences to diagram which deal with too many other frustrating parts, or nothing I taught, I accomplish confusion. The homework practice should have simple subject and verb sentences with only the variations I taught in class: one word subjects, or compound subjects joined by conjunctions. My philosophy is to assign several examples as homework, then check those the next day. If the students grasp the concepts, there is no need to assign multitudes of exercises just to fill a time requirement. Unfortunately, in schools where 30 or more students share one class and teacher, adjusting to everyone’s learning curve leaves some students bored while others catch up. When you oversee your child’s homework, compare it with the text lessons it is designed to reinforce. If you can’t match homework to lessons, ask the teacher for the purpose behind the assignment. It may be very legitimate; it may not. In my next column: What can a parent do to learn what is the right curriculum?