My daughter's second grade teacher seems to give an awful lot of homework. How much should be expected at this age? My friends seem to be noticing the same thing in their children's classrooms - is there a renewed focus on homework lately?

There are a number of trends in education that change and shift over the years. In the middle of the twentieth century, we saw a change in educational focus from drill and practice exercises to problem solving skills, and homework was no longer popular. Later, our nation began to worry about how our students' skills compared with those in competing nations, and students again found themselves laden with homework.

In the more recent past, there has been worry that kids are being pushed too hard, and have become overly busy with extra curricular activities and sports. With more working mothers, and more school children coming from single parent homes, homework seemed to lessen in importance.

Currently, with the Virginia Standards of Learning in place, the accountability of schools is increasing, and there is an amazing amount of material that needs to be covered each school year.  Sometimes there is just not enough time in the school day, and teachers must rely on work that can be done at home for reinforcement of necessary skills.  The ideal amount of homework is that which is tailored to each child's specific needs and situation. As a general rule, elementary school children should have about fifteen minutes of homework for each grade level in school that they are in, beginning with Kindergarten. For example, a first grader should expect to spend around thirty minutes per evening, while a fifth grader would work for about an hour and a half. This time frame should allow children to work not just on assignments that are due the next day, but on long term projects and term papers, as well as ongoing activities like reading together for monthly or weekly reading logs.

Parents should be actively involved in their child's homework. Here at White Oaks, our teachers use the provided  homework assignment books and do an excellent job of making sure that your child has his homework written down each night so that you know what is expected of him.