You so totally could have written my letter at the beginning of this school year (we started Aug 5th)!!! My 6yo son is in 1st grade as well and has homework every day (Monday and Thursday he has 16 spelling words which he needs to write 3x each, and each day (except Friday/wknds) he has a packet in which he does one page (or two, with story on one and questions on the 2nd) page of language and one page of math, and reads a few pages in his school reading textbook. So, Mon through Thurs he has: a page of math & page (or two) of language, book reading, plus spelling on Mon & Thurs.
The first 3-4 weeks were horrible!! He would take sooooooooo l o n g to do it! Occasionally he still does, taking 30 mins to write the first 3 words then 10 mins to write the remaining 12 words!!
I make sure he has a snack when he gets home then get him going on his homework. I agree on the accountability thing as mentioned by another mom where if he cant/wont do it, he will have to tell the teacher he didnt do it (that is what the teacher herself said to do)
My son likes it when I make a checklist for him - you could do this if being distracted or not knowing where to start or whatever. a box or line to put a check mark on may motivate him to get the next check mark on, and so on.
Thankfully, the hard part is done for me which is having my son realize that whining and dawdling just makes it take forever as opposed to just doing it and getting it done and over with! (not that he isnt ever slow, especially on Mondays but HE knows it will take as long as he makes it)
With your son, maybe you can take his homework, and give him one page to do at a time. as he finishes it, give him the next. Eventually you'll be able to leave the stack on the table/desk and he can move on to the next himself. But not until he has the hang of doing one thing at a time.
One last thought - the first week of class, the homework packet was *really* easy (tracing ABC's!!) while the teacher figured out who was at what level. He just *hated* it and really, I couldnt blame him, it wasn't interesting or challenging but I did notice an improvement one day after I said that if he didn't want to always have letters for homework (as opposed to words) he needed to SHOW the teacher he could do it, then he could move on to more interesting homework. Too easy is just as bad as too hard/too much.
And one last comment - I do not mind that he has homework in first grade. It mainly is teaching him good study habits he'll need for the rest of his life.