huiswerk

[BEETGE]

hi kry die kinders baie huiswerk en take om te doen.

[Jongman]

Huiswerk in die algemeen is nie te erg nie. So elke nou en dan is daar n taak wat baie aandag nodig het maar oor die heel dink ek dat huiswerk nie te veel is nie.

[Guest Bronwyn]

My kids were doing about 2-3 hours a day in Pretoria, year 3 & 5.

In Australia they do about an hour, maximum. Except my daughter is now in Year 6 and she also gets 'Projects', say every 2-3 weeks which take her about 6 or more hours work in total.

These projects are quite enjoyable. For her last one, she had a fictitional 'Budget' and she had to plan to buy a house, draw the floor plan, furnish the house, and list all the prices and cut out pictures of furniture she liked and place it in her floor-plan. Then she had to work out what it would cost to tile and carpet (calculate the square metres of the bathroom & kitchen, etc). At the end she had to budget for a pool, and landscaping. Then she did the total costs, including stamp duty, for her 'house'. It was a great project and he spent a few weekends on it, researching things on the intenet, drawng colour schemes she liked, etc. It incorporated imagination with the maths side. After all that, she had to do a bibleography stating where all the info came from.

I really thought it was worthwhile and practical. Most of her projects are really fun for her.

I think the shorter hours here are because the schools finish later and the day seems a lot more productive. They do most of their work during the morning, where we used to have a lot of absent teachers and wasted hours in Pretoria.

My kids are really loving their school here, my daughter has been put in an advanced group and she was never an outstanding student before, just ok .

Hope it helps, Bronwyn

Edited July 23, 2007 by Bronwyn

[Annette]

Hey Bronwyn

My son had the same project last year! They did it in class though .

Beetge, the homework loading here varies a lot between schools and even between teachers in the same school. You also didn't say how old your kids are though. That would make a huge difference.

For instance, my son, who is in year 7, gets no homework at all apart from learning his spellings and times tables and having to do the occasional oral presentation to the class and take objects or articles into school. Kids who don't complete their work in school have to take it home though. At the beginning of the year, us parents had a meeting with the teacher and she told us straight away that she did not believe that homework had any purpose in primary school and that research had shown that it was counter-productive . Funnily enough, just at that time there was some programs on TV about just that and that the SA education dept. were doing research into this. I won't go into all the reasons they gave, not enough time (hungry little monsters! )

On the other hand, my daughter, who is in year 11 and studying the IB diploma this year, does about 4 - 6 hours of homework per night. A lot of it is revising the day's work, preparing the next day's lessons etc., but they also get a whole lot of assignments and essays constantly. She had 3 assigments to complete over the holidays, for example. They are expected to do a lot of independent study as well, e.g. they will cover a certain part of a unit in school and then have to study the rest at home in their own time using other sources than just the textbooks. If they don't do this, they suffer hugely come exam time, so they all do keep up!

[BEETGE]

hallo

my kinders is 13,10 en 8 jaaroud.oudste gaan volgende jaar hoerskool toe.

dankie vir al die inligting.moet maar die kinders voor berei op wag hulle kan verwag.hulle is baie opgewonde oor die nuwe skole.

groete

[MMF]

Hi Almal, Ek wil weet of kinders wat Afrikaans as eerste taal in SA op skool het, sukkel om in te pas in Engels en of ek nou my kinders Graad 9,8,en 1 in Engelse kasse plaas.

[Guest colton]

My daughter has HEAPS of homework, BUT she is in year 12 and in an academically driven school so that does make a difference. Many a night she will still be up at 11pm doing homework or projects. A friend whose daughter is in the same school in year 4 also has heaps of homework so I suppose it depends on different schools.

One good thing though is that even though my daughter will be doing her "matric" now there are no exams as we know in South Africa. She writes tests for two days only and all the work done throughout the year counts towards her year end mark. Her friends back in RSA are busy doing trials and are stressed out big time but they don't have that two month exam pressure period here thankfully.

One of the public schools that her friend attends, does do exams though so it really does seem to differ from school to school and especially between public and private, they seem to have totally different sets of rules. I think you need to choose a school and then find out how THAT school operates.

Good luck

[sadface]

haai

my kinders is year 8 en 9, kry so te se niks huiswerk, die wat hul kry word wel in die klas gedoen, take is heelwat en ingewikkeld

[Blondie]

Hi Mercia,

Ek het vir my jongste ekstra engelse klasse laat neem voor ons hiernatoe gekom het. Sy was in Graad 2. Sy het aanvanklik gesukkel maar dit gaan nou baie beter (nou in Graad 4). My seun wat in Graad 8 was (nou Graad 10) het goed aangepas omdat hy baie engels gepraat het met my ma-hulle. Ek sou aanbeveel dat daar daarem iewers ekstra engels geleer word voor julle kom.

Groete

Tania

[DesV]

Ek di nk nie genoeg nie maar anderer dink te veel soe dit hang af van wat jy dink. eintlik is dit n goie balaans in die laerskool