Your thoughts on busy work in younger grades

[momee]

I have struggled with this for a while and would love the high school mom's perspectives. Just thinking out loud so hopefully this will make sense.

You know how a program like K12 has comprehension worksheets and write this story to go with this lesson whereas OPGTR has a short reading lesson and no worksheets. Or for history a program has something like pretend you are an archaeologist and write about what things you would find amazing from Mt. Vesuvius...

Have you found a delinquency in learning without all of that busy work now that you're into high school level teaching?

I'm moving towards SL from things like Calvert and K12 and there aren't a ton of worksheets and what I call busy work with it. The reading and discussion are my children's favorite part of school so I think this will really work well for us personally.

Basic comprehension and discussion points but no skills drills type stuff. My concern is what about those neat little crossword puzzles and pretend you are a ... exercises.

Will my younger ones suffer from a literature/discussion rich school day (we'll still do spelling, grammar and comp)?? I've wondered the same thing about using WTM/WEM later. I went with SL because I couldn't do the planning thing myself this year but that too seems like it's fairly "free" in it's approach.
All thoughts welcome.

[HollyinNNV]

I have struggled with this for a while and would love the high school mom's perspectives. Just thinking out loud so hopefully this will make sense.

You know how a program like K12 has comprehension worksheets and write this story to go with this lesson whereas OPGTR has a short reading lesson and no worksheets. Or for history a program has something like pretend you are an archaeologist and write about what things you would find amazing from Mt. Vesuvius...

Have you found a delinquency in learning without all of that busy work now that you're into high school level teaching?

I'm moving towards SL from things like Calvert and K12 and there aren't a ton of worksheets and what I call busy work with it. The reading and discussion are my children's favorite part of school so I think this will really work well for us personally.

Basic comprehension and discussion points but no skills drills type stuff. My concern is what about those neat little crossword puzzles and pretend you are a ... exercises.

Will my younger ones suffer from a literature/discussion rich school day (we'll still do spelling, grammar and comp)?? I've wondered the same thing about using WTM/WEM later. I went with SL because I couldn't do the planning thing myself this year but that too seems like it's fairly "free" in it's approach.
All thoughts welcome.

As a public school student and teacher I hated busy-work with a passion. I thought it was ridiculous! When I began hsing dd, I went to SL. In my thinking, it was the opposite of busy work. Everything was purposeful and meaningful. And if anything struck me as busywork, I omitted it.

HOWEVER

My perspective has changed eight years later. I still believe that busywork=bad. However, some things that I classified as busywork may not be busywork after all. For example, I HATED the books where there was a writing passage that you read. Then you went to the questions and answered them by looking back at the reading passage. Surely, narration is much better! But, when my dd was first faced with a science textbook in 7th grade, she did not have the skills to adequately complete the answers by going back to look at the book. And she has super high reading comprehension skills. Seems like a contradiction-but it is true. It takes her forever to find answers although she is getting better.

There ARE a lot of skills that my dd has that the typical busywork doer probably does not have. Her critical thinking skills are excellent. But, my advice would be to look at what makes a good high school/college student first. Then be sure to address those types of skills incrementally in the earlier years. I suppose you could say, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Holly

[In The Great White North]

:iagree:Busy work can often be confused with

a. Memory work
b. Progressing so gradually that they don't realize they are learning anything new (like how to find the answers in the given passage)
or
c. Writing practice (Pretend you are... type of exercises are really practice in writing from another point of view - they just don't call it that until jr hi)

Having said that, however, if it "feels" like busywork to the child, he won't get much out of it. There are some things that truly are busywork and have little to no educational value. The key is to discern the difference.

My oldest (16) went to a school til 8th and should have done a lot more "busywork," especially with math facts and spelling. My middle (13) will happily copy things over and over til she knows them by heart. My youngest (11) thinks it's torture, so we do most "busywork" orally.

[Ruth in Canada]

I, too, am a "no busy work" person.

However, I do agree with the earlier poster about learning to look things up in a textbook. It's an acquired skill. DD acquired it in grade 7 and is still working on it in grade 9. That's ok with me.

I also didn't assign book reports or short reports about other topics. I found them deadly boring as a kid. However--this is another learned skill. DD learned it in grade 8 and is perfecting it in grade 9. Again--this is ok with me. She sees the need and has worked hard to learn it. I'm dithering about what to do with her younger brother. I may start assigning a few very short reports next year when he would be grade 7 age.

[Karin]

My definition of busywork is any work that serves no purpose. I'm against that. In our house, what busywork is depends on the child. For my eldest, doing a full spelling program was busywork. For my youngest, doing a certain number of boring workbook pages isn't busy work because he needs more practise writing and it's less boring to him if we do it in different subjects and ways. My eldest also had to learn to look up answers in a book when she was in gr. 7, so I'm letting my now gr. 5 dd learn to do that now when the work is easier.

As for narration, that was busy work for my eldest who has tremendous reading comprehension and recall. As was dictation.

[Jenny in Atl]

Research does not = busy work
Filling out worksheets that have no real purpose does = busy work.

It's a fine line me thinks.:tongue_smilie: