DS has three reception teachers, anyone tell me why?

[mrsvilliers]

Just curious really. DS is in reception and really happy at school. But the setup is a little different to what I was expecting - there are three different classroom spaces with three different teachers. Tue-Thurs is when they focus on Literacy/Numeracy/Prime and they have different teachers for each e.g. Literacy with Teacher A in Classroom A ; Numeracy with Teacher B in Classroom B; Prime with Teacher C in Classroom C. They're also streamed, for want of a better word, for phonics. When they do ICT/P.E./Reading they also have different teachers for each but this seems a bit more interchangeable.

I get a really good feeling from the school and have no issue with any of the above, I am just curious as to why this might be so, as none of DS's friends have this set up. I have not yet managed to corner the head to ask him why

[TK1930]

Hi
I'm A teacher & thinking it could be either

1. Part time staff
   
2. Using staff with stronger skills than others e.g. One for PE, another for maths...
   
3. Or using teaching assistants to fill in gaps when qualifified staff aren't there (I've seen this happen a lot and TBH if my DD was in a class where this happened I wouldn't be pleased.
   

I'd speak to the head. I think it's not consistent enough for children who are so young.
Good luck & let us know if you find out ;-)

[tilder]

Yes my thought was part time staff too.

How many reception classes are there?

[MsMermaid]

That's how it worked for dd2. There are 3 classes and they had different teachers for phonics and maths.

It seems to be a setting system. Small schools do it by having different tables, bigger schools do it with different teachers and classrooms. Personally I don't have an issue with it, it actually helped my very shy child make connection with more adults. The problem would be if the groups are very rigid, or there was little differentiation within groups as that would limit the progress of some pupils.

[mrsvilliers]

Thanks TK1930 the thing is there is consistency. The part time thing would make sense apart from the fact that each class starts and finishes the day with the same qualified teacher who is there five days a week. It's the same qualified teachers who do phonics / P.E. etc. It's also small class sizes so if the problem was lack of qualified staff you'd think they'd merge classes? Just curious really to see if there was a pedagogical reason.

[mrsvilliers]

X posts! Three classes tilder and yes MsMermaid DS also enjoying the different adult interactions, he had this at his pre school (different city) so used to it already.

[OneEpisode]

They may not be setting by ability now, but they are getting the children used to the idea. Personally I like setting. My eldest finds some subjects (Eg English) hard and loses confidence if the class moves too fast. He finds others (maths) very easy & could get bored/ disaffected. At our primary these sets were never labelled as top set/bottom set. It was just Mrs A for maths, Mr B for English. They covered the same topics too, but each lesson was paced differently.

[tilder]

If it's three classes and three teachers then it sounds like there is a 'key' teacher per class then each teacher plays to their strengths as it were. So they only teach a section of the curriculum not all.

[MigGril]

DS has this, but he's in a big primary 2 class per year. His main teacher who they do have most of the time is the SENCO so she has other jobs to do sometimes. So needs time to do this role.
It works as they often do phonics and marverles maths in smaller groups. Which I think is good and also is better as DS is being more focused work at his level.

I volunteer once a week in his class and there is a huge range of abilities, if they tough them all at once in the same group all the time some would be board and some would struggle. They do whole class work as well, story time and PE for example.

The children seem happy with all the staff.

[Inkymess]

We are three form and they move into 3 groups for phonics - so the 90 children are in the 3 classesrooms, but mixed into ability groups. The teachers then can do more focused activities. The TAs move about too between the 3 classes - I love it as gives DC more variety of kids and teachers too and they are not stuck in their own class the whole time

[nonicknameseemsavailable]

quite interesting, it would mean that a teacher was able to get an overview of the entire year which if they do then want to put them in sets means that they can clearly see which children are where in relation to each other.