<p>What kind of homework (nightly hours) are your kids doing? I admit my son’s only in middle school, but I think that three hours is too much. If its three hours now, what do we have to look forward to in high school?</p>
<p>3 hours is more than most middle schools consider appropriate. Every school should be willing to tell you what the average amount of homework per grade is. This will help you determine whether it may just be taking your child longer than average. In my experience, there is a large range at the average school in how long homework takes different children. The school can just be piling on too much (in which case you need to register this) or your child may need some help managing the load.</p>
<p>usually runs around 2-3 hours per night. Sometimes more. The school has told us to expect 0.5 hours of homework per subject per night. It is a lot, and leaves no time for anything else during the school week. Sports are mandatory and all kids participate for at least one hour per day right after school. I pick him up at 4pm. This is ds’s first year in a traditional school environment, he previously went to a montessori school. The first few weeks were culture shock trying to get used to all the homework, but now we have a routine and it seems to be getting done.</p>
<p>In our middle school, each grade is divided into ‘teams’, with different teachers, etc. Very often, one team is way ahead of the other 2 in a certain subject, and every year, some team will get the reputation of being the worst one with h.w. load. It’s ridiculous that it was a curse to be on the “green team” or whatever. Thank goodness 2 kids are in H.S. now, so much easier to handle. Youngest one going to 6th grade though :(</p>
<p>Our ms seems big on projects, especially in 6th grade. But, barring the projects, my kids never spent more then an hour on homework a night and got A’s and B’s. HS was ususally pretty rough the first semester.</p>
<p>I am in the high school, and I still get about the same amount of homework as I did in junior high. It averages to around two hours a night, but can be as much as five! Every year around this time, I have a huge number of projects to do (science fair and history fair among them). This weekend, I spent about ten hours a day working on the same project that I just finished :eek:!</p>
<p>middle school hw took me about 30 minutes each day usually. i got a’s b’s and c’s. </p>
<p>i do believe if i took my middle school work more seriously high shcool would be a lot easier because i would have trained my mind. similarly, I noticed that if i did not take my high school years (almost 3) seriously, I wouldn’t know much at all! I think i’ll reach the same conclusion in college.</p>
<p>dke- If your child attends a public middle school, then 3 hours is probably too much. I would check with your sons teachers and find out what they think is a reasonable amount of time. If they say he should be able to finish his homework in an hour or so, then you need to start seeing if you can figure out why it takes him so much longer. Is he easily distracted? Does he find the homework boring and therefore putzes around? Is he a perfectionist and can’t let it go? Is he an very slow reader and he it takes him longer to do things? These are all things that could make his homework more difficult.</p>
<p>If your son attends a private school, then this may be what is expected. That is why it is important for you to check with his teachers and find out what they think is reasonable.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of your feedback…its helpful to know that my son’s not the only one dealing with this amount…He’s in pretty competitive private K-12 school, and the headmaster tells me that 1.5 hours is the norm, although I couldn’t do the workload if I had to in less than 2 hours and I’m a college grad!</p>
<p>I have always found it both difficult and mysterious to compare amount of homework. I think that part of it is the number and intensity of assignments, which is where we tend to focus when we are concerned that there is “too much” homework. But (bigger?) parts are: the kid’s own homework-doing-personality (I don’t know what else to call it), the thoroughness and depth of the kid’s work on an assignment, whether they are a math “whiz” or not, how much they agonize over a writing assignment. </p>
<p>S goes to a a quite good PHS and takes all Honors/AP classes. But he seems to be a “fast” homework doer. I will speak with other parents whose kids are in the same classes and overwhelmed with homework, whereas my S is only overwhelmed on the occasional day. Maybe some kids have an innate “work smart not hard” gene, which makes them lucky in the homework department.</p>
<p>Believe me, his speed does not come from being some sort of Mission:Organization prodigy either. He is right square in the middle of that thread we had on boys’ “wad” approach to school paper management. </p>
<p>Another part of the equation is the kid’s goal with homework. My S is a high GPA kid (94uw, 122w) but he could be a much higher GPA kid if he spent more time on homework, I think. I’d like him to be a much higher GPA kid, btw, but that’s not his personality and he has made his own trade-offs, consciously or unconsciously.</p>
<p>Even if we wanted our teachers to give “x” minutes of homework per class( (and I think many schools do have that guideline), I don’t know how they’d even begin to determine whether they were meeting that criterion., because of the differences among the students, themselves.</p>
<p>Three hours is only if you want to get straight A’s. Back in the early to mid 90’s when I was in high school, if no project or anything was due, I would maybe average half an hour to an hour a day (usually done in study hall or lunch) and got a 2.4 something. In college, maybe 2 hours a week if that and around a 2.9 has been maintained.</p>
<p>Joev, are you saying that you do two hours of homework a week in college? That must be a typo, right?..</p>
<p>I agree that you should check with the teacher to see how long they expect the homework to take. </p>
<p>Last year (11th grade) my son was doing about 3 hrs per night…on SOME nights…most of that was reading. Lately, he doesn’t seem to be doing any. But, his grades couldn’t be better and he claims to be doing most of his homework while at school…which must be the case. There’s a lot of group/collaborative work going on now. </p>
<p>3 hours seems like too much for middle school if your son isn’t having problems that are causing him to have to take extra time.</p>
<p>“wad” approach to school paper management
jmmom, my S also uses the wad approach. Also, the filing system of scrunching it all into the bottom of the backpack is interesting. I am starting to see a gradual shift where he is becoming more organized. But, man, prior to this…I have no idea how he found anything.</p>