Statement: Help with Homework?

[bed32]

There are certain areas of work that our son pretty much refuses to attempt - either in school or at home. (In his case Literacy - he genuinely can't do it). Assuming support in school begins to get that side sorted out what support is there for homework?

 

Is it regarded as the parents' job to ensure he does the homework, or are there ways that statements can help here?

 

At primary level is homework considered and essential part of the education, or will LA simply say that it doesn't matter and refuse to make any provision?

[Sally44]

My son has never done homework.

 

At his first primary school they said not to bother. What that really meant was that he was not capable of doing the homework, and no-one was going to differentiate his homework, or show me how to help him with it.

 

The same at his next primary school, which was supposed to have ASD expertise. No homework.

 

In some cases it is a case that the child simply has had enough just getting through the day, and anything on top of that at home is just too much.

 

Some children cannot generalise skills eg. they may learn and demonstrate that learning in school, but be unable to do the same thing in a different environment or with a different person. For example my son learnt to tie his shoe laces. We later bought new shoes, and he could not tie those laces. We had to start again from the beginning. It took another 6 months, and he has learnt to tie these ones. Thankfully he hasn't needed any new shoes!

 

I think this is something you could get incorporated into the Statement. It depends what you want to achieve. You maybe able to get a reduced timetable, and for those lessons he does not attend he could have 1:1 support to help him complete some homework in school. You need to talk with the educational psychologist about that, and about whether it is worth doing homework at home.

 

The kind of homework I do is all everyday reinforcement through numbers on TV, counting toys, dealing out cards, sharing out sweets etc. You could do the same with literacy. You could read, but ask him questions about the story, what he thinks might happen next etc.

[kirky]

Homework has always been a problem in our house! My son does not like school and home to overlap at all so getting him to do homework is a struggle. I don't know about statement provision but this is how we do it. Only 15 mins per nite, and I scribe for him. For instance : put these words into a sentence etc. I read out the question and then write down EXACTLY what he says. Homework is only supposed to tell the teacher how much your child understands about the subject, if my son can't do it then I send in a letter asking them to go over it again in school!

[LDF]

DS (9) also doesn't like homework, it seems like it's just too much for him, he wants to forget about school when he comes home doesn't even talk about it. Sometimes homework gets done, sometimes not and if it's a story he has to write sometimes I end up writing as he does the work. I stopped pushing him to finish the work when I realised it was sometimes taking 2 - 3 hrs. If it doesn't get done I sometimes send a letter in( I only sometimes send a letter in because DS rarely hands things into the teacher anyway, half the time he comes home with finished homework still in his bag, last time I emptied it I found a weeks worth of homework even after telling teacher she has to specifically ask for it).

[dm2010]

Homework at home is a nonsense. Most struggle with it I think - there are too many distractions.

 

At university I gave up trying to work in my bedroom and went to the university library. Then I realised that everyone else had the same idea, and why not ? In those pre-internet days if you could not get work done surrounded by reference books and everyone else working then nothing could.

 

Supervised after-school homework is great if the school does it.

 

Failing that, the local library is very good.

[chris54]

DS rarely hands things into the teacher anyway, half the time he comes home with finished homework still in his bag, last time I emptied it I found a weeks worth of homework even after telling teacher she has to specifically ask for it).

 

If its something realy important I take it into the school office. Or I will email the school telling them to ask him for said item.

School are not to bad at asking for homework, Me thinks its the subject TAs that do that bit.

Son now goes to Homework club one day a week, he gets more done in that hour than he ever does at home. Its run by the science TA he should get top marks for science. So at least that's one less day of homework blues.