Is Your Child a Victim of Unreasonable School Homework?

I read a mother's complaint on the forum, her girl did badly in a spelling test recently and the girl was given the following homework to be finished by the next day:
1) 110 words correction 5 times each, that will be 550 words
2)  5 dictations (consisting 5 sentences for each dictation) correction 10 times each, assuming 6 words in a sentence, that will be 300 words.


The girl was given 200 words to learn, and each week the teacher would choose 10 words from the list for the spelling test. In that particular week, the student was given words from list 100-110 to learn. Unfortunately the girl was not doing well in that test and she was asked to do correction from words no 1 to 110.

In total, that would add up to approximately 1000 words to be completed at night, this does not include homework from her other subjects.

This is a very typical way of punishment given by our school teachers nowadays.  I'm sad to hear the complaint, and this shows that we still have low standard teachers in the schools despite the money spent by government to improve their quality.

If you are a teacher reading this post, I hope you think about the objective of spelling test and the purpose of giving homework. Does writing 10 times of a word really make you remember that word? If this really work, I guess everyone of us can be a PHD or Master. The fact is, it doesn't work this way. No one would like to repeat doing something again and again, I'm sure many of you have the experience where you were copying words repeatedly in primary school, the first few looked nicer than the last few, or the first few were correct while the last few were wrong. 

If a student can remember a word by writing it just 3 times, what is the purpose of forcing them to write 10 times?

If you recall, you probably remember how excited you were when you had school homework the first time, and probably finished it within a short time. But very soon, school homework became your burden or even an obstacle in your study. And now, our children are facing the same issue.

A person can only excel in something if that person has the interest in it. The point here is "interest", ask yourself what were your favourite subjects when you were in school? Or what were your most disliked subjects? And you will realise that the subjects that you did well were the subjects of your interest, and you probably had many reasons why you didn't like a certain subject, and the reasons probably include the way the teacher handled that particular subject.

Treat your child as a human, and not superpower hero or immortal. Many times, parents are aware that the homework given by the school teachers are ridiculous and yet, other than complaining in front of the child, they probably will ensure the child finish the work on time. This is how contradicting our mindsets are.

I have read from a  book and these are what the author did when her child were facing the same issue:
1) She asked the child to write and remember the words, and stop writing once she think she can remember the words.
2) When her child told and showed her she could remember the words, she told her to stop writing.
3) She complete the rest of the writing for her.

Generally these are her arguments:
1) Her daughter would try to remember the words in order not to copy the words so many times, and that was more effective in remembering the words than making her to write the words again and again.
2) By helping her daughter to finish the work, her daughter would have time for other more meaningful activities, e.g. reading her favourite books.

3) She wanted to preserve the interest of her daughter in learning, and all these unfinished homework or punishments would only deter the child from learning better.
4) She would find a chance to talk (or chat) with the teacher, but confronting the teacher would only make the situation worse. 
5) Some might thought that this would spoil the child, but in fact, the daughter would  not rely on her to complete her homework, she only requested it when she faced unreasonable homework.

Note： The daughter of the author achieved very good results and was voted the best student (character) in Beijing and she was accepted by a few well known universities at the age of 16. She is currently studying in Qing Hua University of China.

When I read the book above, I was hesitating whether I would do the same as the author, and I thought this kind of unreasonable homework will not happen in Singapore. But after reading the complaint from the mother, I think I might have to reconsider.

No doubt that we should respect all the teachers, but teachers are human too, there are good and bad teachers for certain. Respect does not mean we should follow or listen to their advice blindly, we should explain this to our children and told them to accept the  imperfection of the teachers and assist them on handling all the possible issues arose from it.

If communication to teacher or school is impossible, I guess helping our children to complete the homework might really be the last resort.

Fun Class: Q for Queen

I was busy planning for my Hong Kong family trip for the past few weeks, the last time I had fun class with her was more than 2 weeks ago, and my Chinese fun class was stopped at lesson 3. Sigh, time is just not enough.

We started the fun class after singing the Greeting Song.

She traced letter Q in upper and lower case.

We listened to the phonics sound and song of letter Q, which went like this:
Quails 'a quarreling q, q, q,
Q is the sound of Q!

She coloured the phonics sheet after hearing the rhyme.

She took out the pictures of objects spelled after letter Q from an envelop, she would say out the name of the objects before pasting them on the A4 paper.

She labeled the pictures after spelled the words.

Her completed letter Q pictures:

I almost forgotten to prompt her to spell the word "Queen"

The craft work was to make a crown and use it for the closing song.
The problem was the paper for the craft was torn by Chloe! I was a bit lost where she kept asking "mummy, what are we doing now?"
Luckily, I thought of using the paper plate as a replacement.....
I cut the paper plate into half, and she suggested we paint it:

As it was a little plain, we punched a few cut-outs and decorated the paper plate before pasting on the headband.

She was happy with her queen crown:

We sang the closing song of "pussy cat, pussy cat" to end the lesson.
The lyrics of the song:

Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?

I've been down to London to visit the Queen.

Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you do there?

I frightened a little mouse, under her chair

If you like my fun classes, pls like the Facebook page "Learn The Fun Way"

The lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Introduce letter Q, kid traces capital and small letter Q
3) Kid listens to phonics sound and song of Q
4) Kid takes pictures of object starting with letter Q, names and pastes the pictures on an A4 paper.
5) Kid labels the pictures.
6) Prompting
7) Colour the phonics sheet (optional)
8) Craft work
9) Summary
10) Closing song

Development age: 3 years 1 mths
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

I attended my phonics lesson for mummies here.

List of my fun classes:
1) A for Ant
2) A for Apple
3) B for Bubbles and Bear
4) C for Crocodile
5) C for Cake
6) D for Duck and Dog
7) E for Egg and Elephant
8) F for Frog
9) F for Fish
10) G for Goat
11) H for Horse
12) H for House
13) I for Insect
14) I for Indian
15) J for Jelly
16) J for Jack-in-the-box
17) K for Kettle
18) K for Kangaroo
19) L for lollipop
20) L for Leaf
21) M for Monkey
22) M for Mummy
23) N for Necklace
24) N for Net
25) O for Octopus
26) O for Orange
27) P for Potato
28) P for Pig

Fun Class: P for Pig

She learned P for Potato in the first lesson for letter P. This was the second lesson for letter P.

This lesson was a bit chaotic as my boy was around, and my girl was a bit restless and not focusing.

She eagerly read the story book of "Three Little Piggies" before we started the lesson....


We sang the greeting song to start the lesson.

We revised the letter P pictures which she had done in the first lesson. She still saw the prawn as spider, I guess I really have to show her the live prawn and peel off the shell in front of her next time......


We listened to the phonics sound and song of letter P, which went like this:
Puffing.... Panting..... p, p, p,
P is the sound of P!

She traced the letter P on the worksheet I printed from Starfall.com


This was the second worksheet without the tracing dots:


Please note that I do not encourage writing exercises for kids, but we do need to teach them writing when they are ready. I let my girl stops anytime when she doesn't feel like writing.

The craft work for this lesson was doing a pig puppet. She had done a similar elephant puppet previously.


She coloured the paper and I cut it out for her to paste. The different parts of the pig are supposed to be pasted on a toilet roll, but the papers just couldn't be pasted, we tried a few times till both of us were frustrated.

And this was what we did:

(paste it on the one that looked more like a piggy....)

Poor boy ended as a victim:


I prompted her to spell the word "pig", and she tried writing the alphabets herself. She couldn't write "G" so I put some dots for her to follow:


We sang the closing song of "The Three Little Pigs" to end the lesson.

If you like my fun classes, pls like the Facebook page "Learn The Fun Way" to get more updates.

Lesson plan:
1) Greeting Song, click here
2) Revise letter P by showing kid the alphabet and the pictures done in first lesson for letter P.
3) Kid listens to phonics sound and song of P
4) Kid learns to write letter P by completing the worksheets from starfall.com
5) Prompting
6) Craft work
7) Summary
8) Closing song

Development age: 3 years 0 mths
(every kid learns on his or her own pace, this is just a milestone of my girl as a guideline)

I attended my phonics lesson for mummies here.

List of my fun classes:
1) A for Ant
2) A for Apple
3) B for Bubbles and Bear
4) C for Crocodile
5) C for Cake
6) D for Duck and Dog
7) E for Egg and Elephant
8) F for Frog
9) F for Fish
10) G for Goat
11) H for Horse
12) H for House
13) I for Insect
14) I for Indian
15) J for Jelly
16) J for Jack-in-the-box
17) K for Kettle
18) K for Kangaroo
19) L for lollipop
20) L for Leaf
21) M for Monkey
22) M for Mummy
23) N for Necklace
24) N for Net
25) O for Octopus
26) O for Orange
27) P for Potato