Maths Teacher OTT

[lottysmum]

My dd came out of school today stating that nearly 1/2 of her Maths set had been given detention because they did not achieve an acceptable standard in their homework....they operate on a red, orange, green ...and anyone who got the red mark was put into detention (This is a year 7 class). My dd achieved an orange mark which apparently indicates that although she didnt get the right answers on some questions she made enough attempts to try and work it out(actually 12). She stated that the question was relating to an area of Maths that they had not revised and not covered fully - which is probably why 50% of the class didn't get the right answer ...they were further told that they should have gone to the Maths Workshop if they were stuck....(this was after the detention had been issued!).

I know my daughter didn't get the detention but surely if 50% of the class didnt get the homework right then it should highlight that there was a high level lack of understanding of some of the questions and therefore instead of issuing detentions the teacher should have gone through it and pointed out that the Maths Workshop was open to anyone who needed assistance....

Its the top set who seem to be working at a very high level already.... my daughter's comments tonight were words to the effect she would be lucky to go the term without a detention which seems a bit unfair if she is doing all she can ....

[noblegiraffe]

Presumably she won't get any detentions because if she gets stuck she will attend the maths workshop which is open to all? That would be doing all she can.

[agnesf]

This sounds a bit rubbish to me & hardly a way instilling enthusiasm for maths. Surely they should be taught how to do stuff in class - not have to go for an extra workshop.

I have recently posted about my DS and year 7 maths and am also finding the approach in secondary school a bit of a mystery.

[NoComet]

Sounds way OTT to me.
I accept that a teacher might feel this far into term is the point to ensure HW is absolute best efforts, but scaring the pupils is not the way to do it.

Set one maths, right up to GCSE will contain DCs who are generally pretty good at everything. Nothing like all of them will be maths Wizzes. This is a sure fire way of putting such DCs off maths altogether.

By the end of year 7 we'd would have (and did once) use our sweetest generalist (who could wrap the teachers round her little finger) to call foul and explain it wasn't on.

But 5 weeks into Y7 is just mean, no one is going to have the courage to say, bog off sir we didn't understand.

[lottysmum]

That's my thinking too...agnesf....my daughter said the Maths Workshop or Clinic or whatever it is lasts 1 hour .... it cant be at lunch time because they only have 40 minutes lunch ..so it must be after school.... I asked my dd whether the teacher had gone through the homework with the class today to find out what the issue was - answer no ....

It does appear that the school had this settle in period of a month and this week its now about waving a stick not a carrot ...on top of a week full of assessments ....

[BackforGood]

But from what you say in your first post, they weren't put in detention for not getting the right answers, they were put in detention for not putting the effort in to try to work out the answers, or seek further help.
You say your dd didn't get the answer right, but demonstrated that she had a good go, so therefore didn't get a detention. Surely maths learning is a lot about the way you go about things, rather than just listing correct answers.

[lottysmum]

They were put in detention if they got a red mark which seemed to indicate wrong answers plus not enough tries at getting it right ....but they hadn't covered the work any how...so I suppose some of them thought they had given it a go and not just not answered the questions...they were not told BEFOREHAND where further help was...and were actually told not to refer to family members for help .... so I would have expected the teacher to spell out what she expects ...where they can get well if needed and at least then explain the homework and highlight where they had gone wrong...

You can see by the fact that 50% of the class got red mark that there obviously were issues with the homework set...plus probably another 20% that got Orange marks ...so didn't get the answers right even having made several attempts - that's 70% of the class didn't understand or could not do the homework set.... and probably would still make the same mistake now because it still has not been explained