Tales from the 5th Grade – Part 2
Hey parents – can we talk for a second? How’s homework going at your house? Is it always as tranquil and compliant as in my house? Do you look forward to sitting down to help your little angel with essays and history and complex math problems? Isn’t it the highlight of your evening? Yep, me too.
Homework is not a fifth-grade phenomenon. We’ve been at it since kindergarten. For better or worse, our kids attend a school that stands squarely on the ‘homework builds discipline’ side of the fence. Our fifth grader spends 30 to 90 minutes on homework every school day — 45 minutes is about average at our house — in addition to reading and other extra-curricular activities. The thing about fifth grade homework is that it’s the first time I’ve really been challenged by the assignments. I mean, when was the last time you labeled the parts of a volcano or recounted the battle of Yorktown*?
Save for learning to read, fifth grade seems to be when the real ‘you may have to actually use this stuff later’ knowledge begins. There’s definitely something to this “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?” business. The teachers are doing their best to trick the students into early iterations of algebra (although they’re still calling it math) and exercising their creative writing muscles with research papers and haiku. And they’re assigned homework that corresponds with all these new and improved intellectual pursuits. Needless to say, things have gotten real.
Here’s just a snippit of our 5thgrade curriculum:
- The American Revolution
- The Bill of Rights (Quick – What’s the 7thAmendment?)
- Identifying Types of Clouds
- The Earth’s Structure
- Polygons, Lines, and Angles (oh my!)
- Geometry
- Acrostic and Cinquain Poems
- Research and Citations
See what I mean? This is all serious stuff!
What’s more is that the teachers trying to prepare the kids for the independence of middle school. Gone are reminders about turning in assignments at the beginning of class and opportunities to revisit silly mistakes. We get fewer and fewer notices about homework and long-term projects, and if parents don’t pay close attention to the teachers’ correspondence, we could miss the one and only announcement you get about test dates. Honestly, I think the teachers know that parents need almost as much training for junior high as our children do.
Most schools at all levels assign homework to reinforce knowledge presented classroom and, perhaps, encourage/force parents to get invested in their kids’ curriculum. I’ll explore some of the research (ahem, controversy) behind homework in a future post. Meantime, parents, sharpen your pencils — our kids are gaining on us! Read what they read; study what they study. Test your own knowledge. You might just (re)learn something from your 5th grader and their homework.
I’d love to hear about your adventures in homework, Bon Mot Mamas!
Homework Machine
By: Shel Silverstein
The Homework Machine, Oh the Homework Machine,
Most perfect contraption that’s ever been seen.
Just put in your homework, then drop in a dime,
Snap on the switch, and in ten seconds’ time,
Your homework comes out, quick and clean as can be.
Here it is – “nine plus four” and the answer is “three.”
Three?
Oh me…
I guess it’s not as perfect
As I thought it would be.
*In fairness, I frequently recount the Battle of Yorktown because, as my bon mot besties know, I’m a shameless Hamiltonfan.