I am a teacher and our guidelines for our district say that the 1st and 2 nd graders should receive approximately 3o minutes of homework a night (but this does vary a little from district to district). Please realize that it is the beginning of the year and the students have a harder time getting used to the routine. Give it a little bit of time. If your child is taking more than the half hour then you should contact the teacher to see if what is going on.

I’m not a teacher or a parent, but I always understood that homework in elementary school was 15 minutes for each grade up until 1 hour a night. So, 15 minutes for first graders, 30 minutes for second graders, etc. Then once a child hits 4th grade it’s considered reasonable to expect 1 hour of homework per night. Then in middle school it was about 1.5 to 2 hours of homework a night. Obviously every child works at his or her own speed, so the 15 minutes would be an average, where a fast child could do the same work in 10 minutes, and a slower child might take 20?

Is it you for some reason do not want your child to learn? It is just you, there is nothing wrong with your child doing homework and actually learning from it. Just think where you may have been if your teachers would have been just a little harder and expected more from you than just the basics. How do you really expect your child to learn the words just by spelling them? Would it not be better if the meaning was learned as well? You claim your child is getting A’s, yet you think the teacher is the psychotic one? And guess what, in the real world, many people do have to do several hours of work at home. Think what the teacher has to do once the class goes home, grade papers, prepare the next days lesson, and tend to his or her own family.

that seems a little high for 1st grade. but i guess it all depends on the school and the student.