English Homework For Kindergarten

[Juliano Nichols]

Itwas pretty darn adorable the first time my Kindergartner showed me her homework. She was happy to sit down like a big kid to complete the ten-minute assignment in her designated black-and-white composition book. And I was thrilled to see her excited about school.

Back in the early 1900s, homework prioritized memorization and facts. Toward the middle of the century, progressive educators began to value learning experiences, eliminating homework at the elementary level. The pendulum began to swing back to homework drills in the mid-1980s though, as schools started implementing high-stakes testing and Common Core standards.

Monica Burns, an educational technology and curriculum consultant, said instead of answering yes or no to that question, we should instead ask why homework might be assigned. Has the school run out of time to cover the curriculum? Do students need more time to practice a new skill? Are teachers trying to find out if students have mastered a concept?

Delilah Orti said that every Monday her daughter, Mia, a kindergartner last year in the Miami-Dade Public Schools system in Florida, received a homework packet with about 25 worksheets that were due at the end of that week.

Orti said the packet included work on phonics, spelling, reading comprehension, and social studies. She describes her daughter as a quick learner who was already reading in kindergarten but still needed her help with word problems and science worksheets.

She and some of her colleagues at the school located about 90 miles south of San Francisco decided a good way to do that would be to eliminate those homework packets. During that time, she said, she started to research homework and found the case against it for young elementary pupils very compelling.

The idea behind the series is to give you materials that are engaging and meaningful (like family games), can be used to differentiate your homework assignments, and are ideal for students who either do or do not have family help with completing their homework.

All activities (except for simple worksheets) come with parent instructions in English and Spanish. They also have links to optional videos that parents can choose to watch to learn how to read with their child or play the literacy games together. To learn more about the series, click on the image below.

amazing idea especially for our special education teaching at our school. this will surely assist our young parents to spend quality, fun but educational time with the kids and it won't be seen as "homework" by the kids. you rock

This is very interesting! I'm considering a similar binder for next year for my firsties. I would like to include in it helpful pages such as our 1st grade sight words and helpful links/logins. What do you do about those kiddos that lose their binders or don't bring it back on Friday to be stuffed for the next week?

Hi Ashley! I've been using binders for about 5 years, and in my experience I've rarely had a student lose their binder. Last year it happened once, so after waiting a couple of weeks to see if she could find it, I made her a new one. I only "stuff" binders at the end of the month with new homework, newsletter, and lunch menu, so that's never really been a problem. The students put their own work in their binder daily if they have any paperwork to take home!

In my District homework is mandatory K-12. Kindergarten is required 10 minutes of homework a night, plus 20 minutes of reading. My Kindergarten Team has been torn over the years about giving our kiddos homework. Your calendars are exactly what we have been looking for and wanting to use with our kiddos as a more "fun", developmentally appropriate form of homework. I can't wait to share this with my team!! Thank you!

Having been home with her and her 3-year-old brother for what felt like forever, I had quite a different reaction to dropping her off than most of the other moms there. They had watery eyes and sniffled into wadded-up tissues.

My daughter is in kindergarten for 6 1/2 hours a day, which adds up to 32 1/2 hours weekly. But when you add in homework, my daughter is spending almost 40 hours a week on schoolwork, which is basically a full-time job.

The packet consists of worksheets that must be completed throughout the week. The worksheets mostly consist of writing practice, drawing, and counting exercises. By the time we get her to sit down, focus, and actually finish them, they easily take about 30 minutes each day, or 2 1/2 hours a week.

Our free printable kindergarten math worksheets will help your kindergarten students develop important math skills while having fun. Many of our printables include an interactive, hands-on element to keep your kindergarten students engaged.

Free kindergarten subtraction worksheets covering subtraction from five, and ten. Students use various subtraction strategies and tools like number lines, pictures, counting, number bonds, ten frames, drawing, word problems, and more.

Free pattern worksheets, games, and activities for kindergarten. These free worksheets will help your students learn a variety of patterns and sequences including ABAB, ABB, AAB, AABB, ABC, ABCD, and more.

Free printable days of the week and months of the year worksheets for kindergarten students to learn about calendars and time. Great for daily kindergarten morning work, circle time, and calendar boards.

Your kindergarten students will build important listening skills with our Following Directions Worksheets! This bundle includes over 240 printable pages covering holidays and seasons throughout the year.

Free printable kindergarten reading worksheets including alphabet, letter sounds, vowels, beginning sounds, rhymes, CVC, sight words, phonics, compound words and more. If you are looking for Kindergarten English worksheets, or even English as a second language, we have you covered.

Free alphabet worksheets and printables for learning the letters of the alphabet. Students will work on letter recognition, letter formation, beginning letter sounds, tracing, handwriting, puzzles, mazes, uppercase and lowercase letters and so much more!

Free printable CVC worksheets for preschool and kindergarten. Consonant-Vowel-Consonant words are easy to read and a great way to work on short vowel sounds. Our free phonics worksheets will have your students listening for middle vowels as they complete each activity.

Short and Long Vowel sounds worksheets for preschool and kindergarten. These worksheets are simple for young students to begin to learn and listen for different beginning letter vowel sounds. Simple picture references are used to help.

These FREE Kindergarten Sight Word Worksheets will help students build important reading, writing, and spelling skills. Students will practice identifying beginning sounds along with recognizing whole sight words with these engaging printables.

Free kindergarten writing printables, worksheets, activities, and assessments. Encourage and equip your kindergarten students with our free printable writing prompts, handwriting paper, vocabulary fill-in-the-blanks, sentence-building activities, spelling practice, and more.

An entire year of FREE printable Kindergarten Writing Prompts for your students! Introduce your Kinder kiddos to Creative, Opinion, Narrative, Descriptive, and Informative writing with our engaging, standards-based writing prompts. Includes 24 prompts for each month of the year (288 total).

Build key vocabulary skills with our free printable word bank writing worksheets for kindergarten. Each page includes a simple theme and five sentences that are missing an important word. Students fill in the missing word using the picture word bank as a guide. When finished, encourage advanced students to write their sentences on their own journal paper and draw a picture to match.

Print our Free Kindergarten Assessment Pack Today! This is great for kindergarten practice worksheets for students to prepare for end of the year testings. Our kg assessment sheets include easy and fun worksheets for kindergarten students that you can use as kindergarten homework or take home sheets. Parents and teachers can use these free kindergarten assessment tool to track student growth during the kindergarten year.

My first year teaching Kindergarten also happened to be the first year that I had ever assigned homework to students. You see, before I began teaching Kindergarten, I taught Pre-K. In Pre-K, we did not give homework.

A third option is to give different homework assignments to different kids, depending upon what supplies they have at home. This takes a little time, but my Kindergarten Homework series makes it easy.

Below is an example of a homework assignment that has simple and predictable directions. These sight word sheets have students reading the word, tracing it, writing it, and reading it again in a sentence.

Another solution is to provide visual aids in your directions, as well as instructions in both English and Spanish. All of this definitely takes a lot of time to put together, but if you use my Kindergarten homework series, the work is done for you!

In my pack, each book and assignment (with the exception of simple worksheets), comes with 5 different options for parent direction sheets. You can choose written instructions with or without visual aids, as well as directions in English or Spanish.

All parent sheets also come with links to videos that parents can choose to watch. The videos explain the activities and give helpful hints, but families can also just read the written directions if they prefer.

When creating my leveled literacy homework series, I designed two types of activities for each skill: family games or activities that require parent support, and worksheets that students can complete independently.

The rhyming words activities (scroll up) are an example of this. The Rhyming Word Memory game is played with family members, while the worksheet can be completed independently (if students are given the directions at school).

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