Right, confession time. My eldest came home a few weeks ago with a piece of school homework, and I genuinely had no idea what he was talking about, despite nodding along like I absolutely did.
This is a collaborative post
Not in the usual “haven’t done fractions since 1998” way. In the actual “I don’t recognise these words at all” way. Cue me, laptop open, coffee going cold (as per usual), falling down a proper rabbit hole trying to understand what on earth his school was actually teaching him, and feeling increasingly unqualified to be raising a human child.
The Moment I Realised I Had No Idea
He needed help writing an “explanation text.” Fine, I thought. I can do that. Explain something. Easy. I am, after all, a grown adult with a journalism background.
Except then he mentioned his teacher had also talked about something else, some other type of non-fiction writing, and asked if it was the same thing or different. And I stood there, in my kitchen, utterly stumped, pretending I was just “thinking about the best way to explain it” while actually thinking absolutely nothing useful whatsoever, and hoping he wouldn’t notice the blank panic behind my eyes.
Turns out I’m not remotely alone in this, which is at least mildly comforting. According to survey data reported by Open Access Government, only one in sixteen parents managed to correctly answer all three sample Key Stage Two homework questions put to them, and over three-quarters admitted to using the internet to help with answers. So basically, most of us are winging it with Google open in another tab, hoping our kids don’t clock how little we actually know. Comforting, in a “we’re all drowning together” sort of way.
Down the Expository Text Rabbit Hole
So obviously, I did what any self-respecting confused parent does. I opened a search bar and started typing increasingly panicked questions.
That’s when I found the actual UK curriculum term I was looking for: the National Curriculum for English lists things like explanation texts, non-chronological reports and persuasive texts, not the word I kept half-remembering from somewhere. That word turned out to be “expository,” which is used far more in American literacy teaching than anything on a UK school wall.
Once I understood that, a lot of my confusion made sense. I wasn’t going mad, I was just googling the wrong side of the Atlantic’s terminology by accident, which is a very specific kind of stupid I hadn’t managed before. For anyone else who ends up down this exact hole, Voyager Sopris has a genuinely helpful writeup with real examples that made the whole “informing versus explaining versus persuading” distinction click for me in a way my son’s exercise book absolutely had not managed to.
Basically, an expository test in disguise, if you like, just wearing a different curriculum’s name badge and confusing tired parents on purpose, it sometimes feels. Once I had that sorted, I could finally help him understand that his “explanation text” homework was, underneath all the jargon, just: here’s a thing, here’s why it happens, here’s how it works. Not complicated. Just badly disguised by vocabulary nobody warned me about before I had children of my own.
Why None Of Us Are as Prepared as We Think
Here’s the bit that actually made me feel a bit better about the whole thing, though, once I’d calmed down enough to look at it properly.
The National Literacy Trust publishes an entire mapping grid just to help teachers keep track of which text type gets taught in which year group, because apparently even the professionals need a cheat sheet. If trained teachers need a reference document for this, I think we mums and dads are allowed to feel a bit lost too.
And it’s not just English throwing curveballs. The Education Endowment Foundation notes that homework support at home varies hugely depending on how confident parents feel with the material, and confidence is exactly what disappears the moment your child uses a word you’ve genuinely never heard before, in any context, ever.
So no, you’re not uniquely rubbish at this. You just left school before “expository” got imported, and nobody sent round a memo.
What I’d Actually Tell You to Do
If your own child comes home with a mystery homework term, don’t panic and definitely don’t pretend you know. Kids clock that instantly, and then you’re both stuck, staring at each other, neither one any closer to a finished piece of homework.
Instead, just say it plainly. “I don’t actually know that word, let’s find out together.” It’s honest, it models exactly the kind of curiosity you want them to have, and it takes the pressure off you to be a walking encyclopaedia at half past four on a Tuesday when you’ve got dinner still to sort and a toddler attempting something dangerous in the next room.
Then Google it properly, the way I eventually did, rather than skimming the first result and hoping for the best. Find something that actually explains the concept with examples, not just a definition that raises three more questions than it answers and leaves you googling the googling.
The Actual Lesson Here
I still don’t know every bit of curriculum jargon my three boys are going to throw at me over the years, and I’ve made my peace with that, mostly. Nobody does, not even the multi-award-winning, journalist-trained mum writing this at eleven at night with cold coffee for the fourth time today, because apparently that’s just what being a parent looks like now.
What I do know now is that “expository” isn’t scary, it’s just American for something we already had a perfectly good word for. And that when in doubt, you can always just Google it properly, sit down with your kid, and figure it out together. Which, if I’m honest, is most of parenting anyway, whatever subject it happens to be wearing that week.
How did I do?
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