Posted by: bobnthuan
on Monday March 8, 2010
When my kids ask me to check their homework, the unspoken part of the request goes like this: "Daddy, please tell me which ones I got wrong so that I can correct them and get my 'A.' " But I look at their homework in a different way. I want to know "Does my child understand the concept being taught?" Those are two very different things. I have kids in second, fifth and sixth grade and I have found that there are two approaches you as a parent can take to checking homework: one is to lead them to the correct answer, and the second is to make sure they understand how to solve problems.
- My son's 2nd grade class
I think the first thing to note is that it is okay for your child to make mistakes. It is not your job as a parent to make it easy on them by directing them to the mistakes. I have a strong suspicion that my kids' teachers can easily sniff out homework done by a student versus homework done by the parent but in the student's handwriting. That is why I often opt not to point out mistakes in homework unless it is an error that is repeated over and over. That said, general sloppiness bothers me (adding instead of subtracting, spelling an easy word wrong) and I wrestle with pointing out sloppiness in hopes my child will be more careful or letting it go and letting the lower grade teach my kids to be more careful. (I find it difficult to teach a child to check their work and not race to finish. If they depend on you to catch their errors, then they will never learn to catch mistakes themselves.)
The second thing is to say is that it is okay -- and perhaps beneficial -- to go off the homework sheet. By that I mean that I give my kids extra problems that mirror the ones they've been assigned. The goal is to check if they can solve math problems or spell words that they haven't seen before but fit with what they have already learned in school. For example, on spelling lists if my kid misspells "night," I'll ask them to spell "bright" and then maybe "sight" just to see if they can pick up the pattern. I might throw in "bite" to see if they can adjust on the fly. Same goes for math. If my fifth grader has a difficult time adding fractions, or my sixth grader can't solve for "x", then I will make up in my head a couple of extra problems that are solved the same way as the problems in the homework but with slightly different numbers involved. I find that when my children realize they can solve Daddy's made-up equations that they are more confident doing similar problems in school. They actually "get it" in a way that others who only did the assigned problems and nothing more.
