homework is alot more difficult

JustKeepSwimming_2

For those within travelling distance of Swansea there is a grand 1940's museum just off Fabian Way. There is an Anderson shelter & loads of other exhibits & you can try on gas masks & original 40's clothing including forces uniforms. They even do spam sandwiches....

WolfSong2000

Tish_P wrote: »

Ha ha! Wolfsong, it's funny but the 7-pages-of-description thing is what I like about Hardy - reading it is like staring at a painting. I don't think I would have appreciated Hardy as a schoolkid, though.

There's being arty, and then there's getting to the point...I'm sure there's a happy medium, I just don't reckon Hardy found it . lol. Having said that, I love Tolstoy and he's forever going off on random tangents. lol.

daveyjp

"I think it's really counter-productive to force kids to read things they don't like"

Absolutely. Some like reading others don't. I hated it and was put off 'Of Mice and Men', 'To Kill a Mockingbird', Siegfried Sassoon and 'Romeo and Juliet' for life as they were forced down our throats in English Lit - it was two years of my academic life wasted, ironically I would rather have carried on doing Spanish, but was told I couldn't.

I didn't read any of the books and walked out of the exam after half an hour. I scraped through English Language, I could spell etc, but used to get bored writing pages of nonsense!

Oldernotwiser

loulou123 wrote: »

I actually liked Silas Marner! tho i was studying it for a-level and ive always been abit nerdy with books!
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I love Silas Marner but it's a bit lightweight for A level, don't you think?

melancholly

daveyjp wrote: »

"I think it's really counter-productive to force kids to read things they don't like"

Absolutely. Some like reading others don't. I hated it and was put off 'Of Mice and Men', 'To Kill a Mockingbird', Siegfried Sassoon and 'Romeo and Juliet' for life as they were forced down our throats in English Lit - it was two years of my academic life wasted, ironically I would rather have carried on doing Spanish, but was told I couldn't.

I didn't read any of the books and walked out of the exam after half an hour. I scraped through English Language, I could spell etc, but used to get bored writing pages of nonsense!

well yes, let's just have school full of things that children like.... playing and sleeping. i mean, a lot of them hate maths and learning english language and it's not like they'll ever need these skills when they leave..............

Tish_P

It's equally defeatist to suggest that children inevitably hate learning and reading, and we should force it on them like a course of foul-tasting medicine. Like I said, there's a happy medium. I think making kids read, but letting them choose what they read, is nearer it than insisting everyone in a class plough grudgingly through the same book regardless of whether it matches their interests, reading age, or emotional age.

looktothefuture

I'm actually looking forward to school homework with my Stepson this year because I didn't learn things the same way as he does now... I might learn something new or grasp something I missed the first time round and things might actually "click" into place after 20 years!

The year before last my SS was struggling with maths so we started "maths school" on a saturday morning and I'd go along to see how he was being taught - I actually grasped fractions for the first time ever!

loulou123

Oldernotwiser wrote: »

I love Silas Marner but it's a bit lightweight for A level, don't you think?

Yes it was a weird choice for A level must admit, but it was alongside studying Milton's Paradise Lost, King Lear and the poems of Tennyson so maybe the exam board decided to give us one that was abit easy going!

MCMitten

Someone mentioned to me today that the cirriculum at the Grammar School has changed this year and they thought that maybe the primary schools are trying to rush the kids through the next couple of years to bring them up to standard for when they start 1st year.

We struggled on through the 1st assignment with lots of moans and grumbles, but we did it.:T Now he's got spelling work each night. So during the last week we've had 2 chapters of the book, a worksheet to accompany it, a daily food diary, spelling work each evening and a story from the newspapers each monday so they know what's going on in the world. It's a big leap from last years read so many pages of your book and learn the spelling of some words for the following week.

melancholly

Tish_P wrote: »

It's equally defeatist to suggest that children inevitably hate learning and reading, and we should force it on them like a course of foul-tasting medicine. Like I said, there's a happy medium. I think making kids read, but letting them choose what they read, is nearer it than insisting everyone in a class plough grudgingly through the same book regardless of whether it matches their interests, reading age, or emotional age.

i'm not suggested it gets shoved down throats, but how on earth does a teacher provide support in lessons and come up with extra activities for a random selection of books? it's completely impractical!