How much written documentation do you get re what goes on at school?

[whatalovelyday]

At our school we (sometimes) get a termly overview of the topic covered and some of the subtopics - one A4 sheet per term. That's it. Because my dd tells me very little about school I know very little about her day to day life there. Except that she seems happy so I know I don't need to worry, but I don't feel massively able to support her without more info. She's year 1 by the way, so still very little. It's a lovely school, but I do feel the communication could be better.

Ideally I'd like: a timetable, list of all staff working with class (eg specialist music, TAs etc), and a brief weekly update of what they're doing. This could be in the classroom window, or just a copy of the planning documents. No detail - just a list of what they are doing in a week.

Is this something I could reasonably suggest to the school to improve parental engagement? What do people get in other schools? What do teachers give out?

[whatalovelyday]

yes, at ds's nursery they just put their planning notes on the board for anyone to see who wants to. Can't be that hard. But always hard making suggestions because of the implied criticism.

[Beanbagz]

My DCs are Y6 & Y3. We are given..

Targets for the year
A brief explanation of what they'll be doing each term
Class timetables
Music lessons timetable
School calendar with all important dates on
Weekly emails with details of what they've been doing in class
Email of sporting fixtures/trips if DCs are involved.

Plus the timetables are on the school website along with the list of teaching staff & the lunch menu.

I have to say that a lot is done by email these and i write everything in mine & the DCs diaries as soon as we get it.

[whatalovelyday]

that sounds great beanbagz - lucky you! i think i will say something. email would be fine.

[whatalovelyday]

anyone else on this, before I launch in!

[juniper904]

Seeing as NUT and NASUWT are on Action Short of Strike Action, partially due to the excessive workload expected from teachers, who is going to be writing out the plans, minus children's names and levels? Who is going to be writing up the term's work? Who is going to be printing it all out and distributing it to the children?

[whatalovelyday]

i know of one school where they get the kids to do it in class, presumably with a TA, a little newsletter thing each week saying what they've learned about.

I know teachers work too hard, but also know that it's hard for parents to support their work if they don't know what they're up to.

[NotMoreFootball]

At the beginnning of the year we got a copy of the timetable (with all the specialist teachers on) and we get an email every Friday from the class teacher which tells us which topics they will be covering in each subject the following week for my DS in Yr3. The school also sent us a calendar at the start of the year with all the holiday dates, sporting fixtures etc on, the headmaster sends out an email every Wednesday with little updates on, we get a whole school newsletter via email every Monday and the Sport depts send out emails virtually everyday with results and upcoming events on!
All my DS's work from the week is marked and then sent home to us every Monday evening for us to see, we then sign a cover sheet to confirm we've seen it and it's all sent back to school. I feel as if I know every single thing that he is doing in school and everything that is going on in school around him and I haven't even been inside the school since the start of term!

[whatalovelyday]

Wow that sounds wonderful. Last year during a trickly patch my dd's teacher grabbed me for ten seconds at the end of the day to tell me three highlights from the day. It was invaluable for me helping my daughter who was a bit stressed by school at that point. I really don't think it would take long to jot it in an email to send to parents, and because they could then support the school's work surely in the long run it would make school's jobs a bit easier in other ways? Currently we don't even get a timetable or names of specialist teachers our children work with. It's all a mystery, which can't be ideal for anyone, can it?

[NotMoreFootball]

I think that sending the work home once a week for us to see is the most valuable form of communication we get from the school. I can see exactly were he is going wrong (or right!), in his previous school we only saw their work twice a year on parents evening when we had a rushed 5 minutes to look through everything. Already this year I can see that it's comprehension which is giving him the most trouble so I can help him with that at home.
The work all has to be marked and graded anyway so I don't see how there is any extra work involved with the teacher sending it home to look at, all the parents are happy with this and there doesn't seem to be any problems with people forgetting to send the work back to school!
The weekly email is only a few lines long and covers all the sentinel topics for the following week, I can't see it taking more than a few minutes to write as I'm sure the teachers must have the weekly planning ready for the following week by the Friday evening.

[alcofrolic]

Our children have trouble remembering home reading diaries each day. How they would remember to bring back all their work books on Tuesday, I have no idea. That is putting a lot of trust in parents, and I bet it's a nightmare. Not everyone is as diligent or reliable as you 'notmore'.

It wouldn't be appropriate for parents to see my plans, as they are differentiated for specific groups of named children. I would be unwilling to put in the extra work of producing an annotated version for parents as it would be a complete waste of my time. My plans are detailed and I spend lots of time producing them. I do this for the education of the children in my class - not for their parents.

I plan maths day by day and literacy lessons evolve during the week, depending on the children's understanding. Planning is personal to the teacher - it guides the immediate lesson and feeds into a series of lessons.

I would take exception to having to report back to parents why I hadn't covered something one week, because it had been written on the plan, when in fact, I had changed plans mid week to tailor them to the children's learning needs.

Why you need timetables is beyond me. I hope someone explains that one.

[alcofrolic]

Our children have trouble remembering home reading diaries each day. How they would remember to bring back all their work books on Tuesday, I have no idea. That is putting a lot of trust in parents, and I bet it's a nightmare. Not everyone is as diligent or reliable as you 'notmore'.

It wouldn't be appropriate for parents to see my plans, as they are differentiated for specific groups of named children. I would be unwilling to put in the extra work of producing an annotated version for parents as it would be a complete waste of my time. My plans are detailed and I spend lots of time producing them. I do this for the education of the children in my class - not for their parents.

I plan maths day by day and literacy lessons evolve during the week, depending on the children's understanding. Planning is personal to the teacher - it guides the immediate lesson and feeds into a series of lessons.

I would take exception to having to report back to parents why I hadn't covered something one week, because it had been written on the plan, when in fact, I had changed plans mid week to tailor them to the children's learning needs.

Why you need timetables is beyond me. I hope someone explains that one.

[AbigailS]

?I'm sure the teachers must have the weekly planning ready for the following week by the Friday evening.? This made me smile and is typical of the misconceptions about a teacher's job. Unfortunately this is not the case at my school. That?s what our weekends are for! For literacy and numeracy I check my assessments from the week before and the children?s books and plan from there. Over the weekend I thoroughly plan Monday?s sessions and outline Tuesday and Wednesday. If I?m to build on the learning of the session before there is no point in planning in any depth for other sessions as I may need to go off at a complete tangent based on how things have gone in the lesson before. (For example my draft medium term plan has a week on place value, then a week on varying calculation strategies using two digit numbers. However place value work was shaky, so over the weekend I decided to continue it for three more days until it was more secure, then only taught adding a single digit number to a two digit number.)

I agree sending books home would be a nightmare in my school, each week we would have a number of children without their books returned (some would be permanently lost, others just forgotten that morning or left at non-residential parent?s so unavailable for the rest of the week). Work would need to be done on bits of paper and stuck in (hopefully) at a later date. Any comments in my marking to improve the next piece or clarify a misconception would be lost out on and that would also make building a book of evidence challenging.

I also had to decline a parent?s request for all my planning each week. Planning is a working document. It is in my own short hand. It has children?s names all over it, including SEN details, so it is confidential. I really don?t have the time to photocopy my plans and obliterate the references to other children and expand my comments so they actually made sense to the parent. I did provide a timetable for a parent, but primary schools are so flexible they got upset that their child hadn?t had science on the afternoon timetabled due to visitors in school, and the following week we had to swap art and PE due the school photographer ? Again, as a teacher it caused me so many problems and extra meetings with these parents to explain it all I did not send the next term?s timetable home.

Sorry to sound so negative. I agree parent involvement is crucial, but logistics make the level that some parents want totally unmanageable. At least all schools should be adding curriculum information by year and subject to their websites now.

[AChickenCalledKorma]

In principle, we get a newsletter at the beginning of term, with the topics for the term and various useful stuff about which days they are doing PE etc. This year, they have also introduced a "meet the teacher" evening when they are going to tell us similar stuff, plus what their expectations are for the year.

We used also to get a very short report in about Oct, with our child's current targets on. But to be honest, they were usually out of date by the time a week had gone past!

[whatalovelyday]

Teachers, would it feel too much to scribble on a blackboard by the classroom entrance for example on a Monday morning: This week we're doing: Shapes, what grows on trees, what lives under the ground, interviews. Or do you not know that much at the start of a week?

I'm really not after anything very detailed - just some headlines so i can start some dialogue with my dd - otherwise I feel quite alienated from her education, which at 5 can't be good?

As for timetables, we'd like them so we can say "how was music today?" and so we can know which teachers they've spent time with. Remember some children, young ones in particular, really don't tell us anything, and that's quite a big leap, especially in reception, to go from a life where your parents know almost everything about your day to almost nothing.

[alcofrolic]

I really can't see the point 'whatalovely. I am far too busy for an hour before school writing rubbish on blackboards to appease parents. Surely, as a parent, you don't want (or need) to follow the school curriculum at home? Home is the place to expand the children's education, not to continue the same old stuff as at school - that would be pretty boring!

Maybe your children aren't telling you anything because they're fed up with being bombarded with questions every day about things that, in their eyes, are over and done with. Why would a 5 year old want to tell you what they'd done in 'music' (what is 'music' to a 5 year old?) when all he wants to do is pick up his ds, run round the garden, play with the dog and have some fish fingers? And what would you do with the information that he had 'done music'?

[TheBuskersDog]

"I'm really not after anything very detailed - just some headlines so i can start some dialogue with my dd - otherwise I feel quite alienated from her education, which at 5 can't be good?

As for timetables, we'd like them so we can say "how was music today?" and so we can know which teachers they've spent time with. Remember some children, young ones in particular, really don't tell us anything, and that's quite a big leap, especially in reception, to go from a life where your parents know almost everything about your day to almost nothing."


Most children, even much older ones don't tell you anything either. When they're at secondary school you know exactly what lessons they have everyday, it's still like getting blood out of a stone to know what they have done that day.

[whatalovelyday]

So as a teacher you think it's really think it's better if parents are in the dark and leave you to get on with it? Surely all the evidence shows that interested and engaged parents are key to helping children succeed at school (and i"m not talking about bombarding with questions - just wouldn't mind the odd bit of info). I'm amazed it surprises you that I'm interested to know what they're covering. Isn't that why everyone's getting sent on parent engagement courses left right and centre? Clearly this sort of info sharing works successfully at other schools mentioned on this thread so some heads are managing to build in time for their teachers to prepare the information.

[NotMoreFootball]

The timetable we receive is so we know which specialist subject they have each day so we know when library books or recorders etc are needed, I don't think anybody really wants to know what specific time they have having phonics or numeracy on a certain day.
The planning email we receive each week is as simple as:
Math - subtraction and addition (please practice counting money with your child)
Science - Landform and Erosion
Grammar - compound sentences
I would never expect a detailed plan for every individual child to be sent home every week and if a teacher changed their mind and decided to teach weather instead of erosion I'm sure the parents would not be demanding their resignation!
Every child in the school (year 1 - year 11) receives their work to bring home every Monday and return the next day and the system has worked well for many years. There is a very positive atmosphere around the school and nobody is constantly trying to grab the teachers for updates on their child as we can see for ourselves how they are doing.

[whatalovelyday]

that's what i'm after football - nothing more complicated - and certainly not as a tool by which to hold teachers accountable - no prob if it changes - just be nice to have a clue.

[alcofrolic]

I imagine that's a private school notmore, with a far different intake to ours. I know that we wouldn't receive all books back on a Tuesday.

What a lovely I don't really think you're understanding what 'planning' is. It is a working document, and is not set in stone (at all). On Monday I intended most of the class to be adding tens and units, but by Wednesday, I have found that the children's addition and subtraction of units is dire, so I've completely changed what I'm doing for the rest of the week. I would not want to lay myself open to parents' questioning WHY I haven't stuck to my plans. It would be an unnecessary hassle. If a child is having a particular problem, I talk to the parent about specific support at home.

We send a curriculum map for the half-term, and notes in home reading diaries if we would like specific things practised (e.g counting money), as and when things arise.

[juniper904]

I too spend the best part of Sunday planning, and then change and adjust them throughout the week. So no, there is no definite overview of the week. It evolves, based on the children's needs. Like others have said, my plans detail which children are free school meals, which are SEN and how they are supported, which children are struggling and what the levels are. There's no way I'd share that with parents.

Maybe DC don't share the details of their day because it seems like a inquisition. There are 101 ways to converse about the school day- I'd recommend open ended questions such as 'what did you enjoy today?' rather than 'what did you learn in literacy?', especially as little ones probably don't realise that the different parts of the day have different titles.

[whatalovelyday]

Juniper and Alcofrolic, ok so take your point that planning is a more organic process, and I wouldn't expect to see your professional notes on different children!

How about then a brief diary at the end of the week? I'm really only talking eight lines - the kids could even do it themselves. A state school up the road apparently does this - friday afternoon a few kids and a TA write a little newsletter. But I'd be happy with something up in the classroom window.

I think you are misunderstanding my interest. I don't interrogate dd. I don't expect to know every moment of her day. I try to show interest but respect her privacy. But at the moment the feeling of knowing absolutely nothing, well that doesn't feel right either.

[BirdyBedtime]

I came to this thread to post what we get IRT what DD does at school - 'meet the teacher' at the start of the year, monthly one side of A4 setting out key areas they'll be covering. It's probably enough (and maybe more than some get), but I'd like more and I'm quite at the suggestion that parent's shouldn't be interested in what their children are doing at school - particularly the comment about excessive questioning. Surely parents who care about their children should be interested in what they are doing - luckily my DD would talk us through every minute of the day if she got the chance, but DS (even though still at nursery) just says 'played' and if that continues, I'll be competely in the dark about what he has learned.

I have to say that if one of the teachers in our school said something like "I am far too busy for an hour before school writing rubbish on blackboards to appease parents. " - I'd really be miffed.

[Pipsqueak99]

I do understand exactly what you are getting at whatalovely.
At DS school we get a timetable for the term and a detailed breakdown of the topics covered over each half of the term. DS teacher also photocopies and posts up a copy of her planning notes (I assume this is what they are?) for each week, outside the classroom (it contains rough scribbles and references to plans and books and notes that I have no clue about, as well as an overview of what she is planning for that week).

I find all of this invaluable as a discussion point for DS. I try to talk about the topic being covered during the next week over the weekend and try to refernce anything we happen to be doing at home that is related. I also ask him every day "what did you do in music today" or "did you enjoy swimming". There are plenty of times when he might say "I didn't do x, y or z today because...........the teacher was away, we had a concert or whatever. And then we can talk about that instead. He also has a copy of his school timetable posted up in his bedroom so that we can look at it every day and see what he is doing/help him to plan his bags etc. etc.

I find it really valuable as a tool to bridge the gap between home and school and so that I can support him at school. I don't view any of these things as documents set in stone and wouldn't consider questioning why a weeks plan had changed a bit or why certain lessons hadn't happened as planned each week. DS's teachers seem to really appreciate and value the mutual two way exchange of information that occurs as a result.