Homework in kindergarten immersion school

[harldav]

How much does homework matter in kindergarten, in an immersion school? My 5 yo goes to a Chinese immersion school and they send home a homework packet that’s about 8 pages long, to be completed between Wed and Sunday. It’s about half Chinese half English. I think even in china, I didn’t get homework at that age, but then again I was only learning one language. I can see how learning to read in 2 languages at once might require more practice.I’m still encouraging him to finish it (ok, kind of forcing), but I also don’t want him to have to do things that aren’t age appropriate. Those of you who went through immersion schools, what were the homework’s like? Were they instrumental in you learning the language?

 

[marsoco]

@harldav I have my kid in a bilingual school, mind you here they start age 6/7.
This one in particular doesn’t assign any homework. It is a till 3 pm every day, but they schedule one hour per day to do work there at school any additional work the teachers assign.

The only thing they do is ask you to make the kids read 5-10 minutes a day. And even that is a game because you earn a star to out on a poster in the classroom after 7 times doing it. So they collect start there. Meant to be motivating and a fun thing.

I would have significant issues with HW at age 5. It’s the last time they have to really be free and play and learn social norms and how to play with each other.

 

[harldav]

@marsoco Yeah I have no problem reading to him, he likes it anyways and we do about 20-50 min a day usually (I think he wants to delay bedtime and his dad usually loves reading with him so they can read a lot). The homework though is a lot of tracing characters or letters and he doesn’t like it, which I can’t say I blame him for. I just don’t know if setting the precedent that it’s ok to not finish homework is bad.

 

[marsoco]

@harldav The reading practice is for the kid not the parent.

Do they make them only trace or just the first few times and the rest is written independently?

 

[harldav]

@marsoco Trace the first few times, rest is independent

 

[marsoco]

@harldav Yeah, there is no way around this. Will have to get through it. Not sure if it should be homework, but if they don’t have enough time to practice then not sure what else can be done.

Did you know what their homework policy was before enrolling your kid?

 

[harldav]

@marsoco I mean it’s a public school lottery system and we knew we wanted to go to a Chinese immersion, but it’s basically that we got the lottery to go there and we were pretty happy. I guess I’ll talk to other parents at the school and see what they do. Maybe we’ll just try our best to finish but if we don’t we don’t.

 

[jadiencf]

@harldav I would hate this. Our kid is in 1st grade immersion and any homework is optional and they say it should never take longer than 20 min. Our last school had a no homework policy.

 

[harldav]

@jadiencf I guess in theory our homework is optional too because they’re not graded on it and if they’re sick or something they don’t need to be made up. But in practice the kids will be quizzed on the materials later so I want to help him practice and prepare and homework is a good way to do that. I found that with any homework that is creative (ie he can draw stuff or write anything he wants), it takes like 2 minutes or less per page because he’s happy to do it. Anything that’s rote practice, he hates it and it takes longer. Unfortunately Chinese characters are mostly rote practice (I mean so is the English alphabet but there is a lot more Chinese characters than English alphabet).

 

[looploop]

@harldav We had no homework in kindergarten, 15 minutes per night in 1st grade, and now about 30 per night in 2nd grade. My son is in English/Spanish immersion

 

[harldav]

@looploop Our teacher has been telling us that they will reteach all the kinder material in first grade so we shouldn’t stress too much. But then again I kind of want to set the precedent that if there is homework he should do it. It is kind of frustrating, I have a feeling that even one more year would make him more mature and more able to sit through homework.