Is this abnormal for 4th grade homework?

Your school sounds great, Izzie!

Oh! I'm glad to hear that being read to counts since we've been counting it. Usually over the next night's dinner Mo will fill Mr. B in on what is happening in the book -- that gives us a great chance to talk about it.

The reading has to be recorded and is checked daily by the teacher so I include it as homework.

I agree that the quality of the homework makes a huge difference. I read one article saying that a teacher should never assign homework that s/he hadn't created themselves. I think that's an extraordinary idea!

I think it's important to note, though, that the article you linked is an opinion piece, not research, and she certainly isn't talking about xeroxed worksheets assigned as homework.

She also says


I'm not sure how she thinks homework increases learning opportunities to help low income students in the way that vacations and private lessons do.

I think it's sad (and true) that teachers working within NCLB suffer so many restrictions. I think we've killed off the ability for a teacher to be a truly good teacher. NCLB killed learning in my opinion.

I think her point is that rich people can pay for those activities to broaden the learning of their children through life-experiences (maybe think of extra weight on tutoring among all the other experiences). If you take away all the other things and just focus on tutoring the point is clearer. Poor people are often (not always!) less educated than rich people and can't afford to pay a tutor to help their kids out.

RE: reading aloud - I said MY district allows for that to count as IR. Yours may or may not include it.

Yes, when Jane was in elementary school, they had either soccer or volleyball
practice 3 times a week about 1 hour after school ended. So the kids
stayed on, had a snack and did their homework in school - supervised by one
teacher. At 4 pm practice started until 5 pm.

In middle school they also had supervised homework rooms available after school (for one additional hour) and Jane often stayed there to do her homework.

Supervised for what purpose ?

Kids always have to be supervised at school (even after hours). It's a legal thing.

We have a homework club after school where I work now (middle school), though there aren't any at the elementary schools.

Just piping up with my token thing, I know we're lucky and I don't know how unusual our schools are but that's not a universal statement. I'm very, very happy with sozlet's school and her opportunities to learn. And it's a regular ol' public school, not private or charter or anything.

I'm also anti-NCLB -- I think my daughter's school is so good in spite of it, not because of it. (It did recently earn some "Race to the Top" money for being a good school, not sure if that's part of NCLB?)

I'm not saying anything general the other way 'round either -- that because our experience has been so good, that means all schools are that good. But as a student at a great public school, and then a teacher in training, and then as the parent of a student at a public school, I've been hearing "all public schools suck," for quite a while and at no point was it true in my experience. (And my other point there is that people were complaining about public schools -- and the state of education more generally -- from way before NCLB.) (I recently talked to a cousin who said that when we were kids and she visited my school, she was so incredibly impressed by it that it's why she put her own kids in a private school, too. I said um, my school was a public school! An alternative public school, but public. She said .)

Okay so the first math homework came home today. It concerned retiling floors. Mr. B is in the flooring business. I challenged him to work the problem without a calculator. It took him a few minutes.

I'd like to challenge you to complete this 4th grade math problem:

Anna wants to retile her floor. In a catalog, she found a set of 9 inch square, white floor tiles and she thought they'd look great in a checkerboard pattern, alternating with black tiles. Unfortunately, her parents were unwilling to give her the $24.95 per dozen required, so anna saved her babysitting money and she was able to buy enough tiles for her 12' x 15' beedroom on her own.

If tiles are sold in packages of a dozen, how many boxes did Anna need and how much did Anna spend?

Don't forget -- these are 9x9 tiles, not 12x12.

Wait..... 144 tiles at 12 per box is 12 boxes times 24.95 = $299.40.

28 boxes (14 white, 14 black) = $698.60 plus tax

She will have 8 tiles of each color left over.

That's a lot of babysitting!

(Took me 8-10 minutes.)

You changed your answer!
(Dammit, you made me go back and double check mine!)

I had the same ballpark answer as you did the first time, but thought that was a crazy amount of baby-sitting.

I misread my notes the second time around.

A 12'x15' room is the same as a 144"x180" room. Each of those lengths divided by 9 is 16 and 20. Think of the 16 and 20 as a grid - a rectangle. Multiply 16x20 to get 320" squared. Divide by twelve (per box) and get 27 boxes (there will be left over tiles). 12x$24.95 is $673.65.

How'd you do yours, Eva?

Same rectangle plan.
12' on one side = 144" = 16 tiles
15' on other side = 180" = 20 tiles
16 tiles x 20 tiles = 320 tiles total (160 white, 160 black)
12 tiles to a package, right?
14 packages = 168 tiles (8 left over) of each color = 28 packages
28 packages @ $24.95 ea. = $698.60

Is this right, boomer?

Mr. B came up with 27 boxes at $673.65.

It's his job to figure out how to use less so I'm thinking you're right too. I think he saved a few by calculating the selvage on the 12' side.

But more importantly, do you think this is a fair homework question for a 4th grader?

Because I'm really tempted to write "Are you ******* kidding?" on Mo's homework assignment.

Selvage doesn't work. I don't know where he saved a box.....

Ooops. I missed your answer here. That must have been how Mr. B figured it.

That is a lot of babysitting.

You could cover the floor with 27 boxes, but you'd have more tiles of one color than the other. I assumed you'd want it exactly 50-50 since it's checkerboard.

And no, I think this is too hard for 4th graders. Hell, we can't even agree here.

Of course, math is not my best subject.