What is the purpose of elementary school homework?
Teachers assign homework for a wide range of reasons, and I think to get into a teacher's head is almost impossible. You are going to have teachers who assign busy work, and sometimes there's homework that I look at that I can't interpret as anything other than busy work. And some teachers are going to assign things that seem a little too hard, and you're going to think, "Wait a minute! I can't teach my child this! They have to go to school to learn this, because I don't know it." So there are definitely going to be some bobbles in the homework process that you're going to feel a little confused by, but as a general rule, the reason we give elementary school kids homework is because they need to practice what they learn in school. Most kids are in school 180 days a year, and they're in school for about 6 hours a day. So that means they're in school less than half of the days of the year, and they're in school for, I don't know, about half of their waking hours. It's not that much time. And so you want to think, "Do you want your child to sit and do 6 problems, 6 long division problems in class, or do you want them to do 3 in class and then take 3 home? Those 3 that they do at home a) help solidify the skill, b) give the teacher time in class to move on to a new lesson, and c) force your child to actually recall the process that they learned in school and try it out at home. I also think homework serves a really important purpose of showing parents what their kids are learning in school. It's one of the main ways that teachers can keep parents informed. We're doing long division. Exhibit A is the homework. Secondly, maybe your child's struggling with long division. Exhibit A is the fact that your child can't do the homework correctly. So if you pay attention to your child's homework, it's often a really good way to see how they're doing and what they're learning.
