Rather than spending the last few hours of his holidays playing Skylanders or besieging his sisters with Nerf bullets, The Little Master was completing his 10 pages of holiday homework. Yep ... homework ... on the holidays!
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Not quite The Little Master, but not happy just the same. Image from here. |
You see, The Little Master is in Year 3 and looming for him is Naplan. So the pressure is on. Not from us at home. It's rather a "reflective pressure" from school. You see, school does a lot to try and minimise any apprehension about Naplan by providing the kids with justifications as to why they're learning particular content (persuasive texts this year) and is giving them lots of opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge through group tasks, individual assignments and of course, homework; holiday homework! But by providing all of these chances for the kids to practise what they've learnt, especially in a mock Naplan test way, the idea of making such test "anxiety free" for kids is actually working in reverse. It's stressing them out!
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The Little Master has completed a number of these. Image from here. |
I so hate buying into the whole "you must do well on Naplan" mindset, but it is quite hard to avoid it. Homework has contained multi-choice tasks each week, information regarding the administering of the tests is in the school newsletter and if you even think of wanting to apply for a place at a private school, then you'd want to have your Naplan Test result ducks in a row because they're going to be one of the first documents you're going to have to trot out to get your child into a flashy-pants school. Sad really. Let's just hope that things such as generosity, empathy, motivation, perseverance, kindness, etc shines through after our kids have been Napalmed, I mean Naplan-ed, in May!
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How insane really. The only thing you should be worried about at that age is what's for afternoon tea. I think it has more to do with school egos. But good on him for trying hard to do his best. Xxx
ReplyDeleteAnd we vote the governments in! Holiday homework in primary-how sickening!
ReplyDeleteI think that some of these tests are out right ridiculous. We should be promoting more creativity and common sense into our teachings instead of just numbers and equations.
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