Kids having to rank their LEAST favourite classmates?

That sounds like an exceptionally bad idea. Are you sure your daughter understood it properly or might she have got the wrong end of the stick somehow?

Bloody hell. That sounds like collectively years worth of therapy for that class. What was their teacher thinking?

I assume it's so the teacher can encourage kids to play with children they don't normally hang out with. But it doesn't sound very well executed

Only for the kids no one likes. And there would be a reason why if the same names kept appearing at the " unfavoured"

Wow. If true, that is batcrap crazy.
You need to go to the school and say this is what my daughter told me, im assuming she got it wrong because what the actual.fuck

Probably not those words.

Is this for real? Totally inappropriate imo. It's the teacher's job to be aware of any social issues in the class and organise accordingly, not the children's job to participate in this.

Your post is a bit dramatic and misleading. You say the class was asked to write down who they least like to play with but then you start talking about ranking their least favourite kids.

Was this done in confidence?

Maybe teacher is looking to see if there is any child in particular who is unpopular.
Maybe with the intent of integrating them into the class a bit better or keeping an eye out for bullying.

I guess in the past teachers figured this stuff out by watching for who was always last to be picked at teams etc

Certainly my sons’ primary school never did this. But when we had a SLT meeting with the large (12 form entry) secondary school before they started there they were asked not if there was anyone from their primary school they did want to be in a form with but they were asked if there was anyone they didn’t want to be in a form with. In those circumstances I thought that was ok - it was to reduce existing clashes or bullying history.

in the circumstances you describe I’d have the same concerns as you. Can you ask the teacher what was the reason for this and what you see as the unintended consequences

when grouping students for camps/day-long field trips etc., schools sometimes survey students to see who they want to be grouped with. The survey that my students just completed for camp asked them to name one friend they want to be grouped with, and then a ‘do you have any other comments’ question, which gave them the opportunity to say if there was someone they didn’t want to be grouped with. The results were illuminating!

Wording it as ‘three classmates you play with least’ is awkward phrasing and not ideal for year 3. I hope it was anonymous at the very least!

Did the teacher maybe ask them to write down who they played with the most and who they played with the least? That would make more sense than writing down their least favourite person...which would be horrible.

Why were the results illuminating???

Like and don't like to play with isn't the same as like and dislike, you might like to play with kids who play football or like to build models and don't like to play with ones who don't share interests.

I cannot see the rationale for this.

If there are kids that really don’t get on to such an extent that they shouldn’t be in a class together, the teacher should already know this surely? Not be dependent on lists written by 7/8 year olds. which could be based on “X annoyed me this morning” rather than any genuine issue.

I agree there is a lot of potential for whispering and hurt feelings.

This is a specific exercise by Rudolf Dreikurs. There are more questions to it than just those. It helps teachers get a sense of the social web of the classroom and can be extremely helpful for a teacher. It's called a classroom sociogram if you want more information about what a teacher may use this information for. It's really primarily about identifying children who lack a sense of social and/or academic belonging.

Terrible! I would complain.

Thats awful. Even the 'write down your 3 favourites' can be fraught with issues. My oldest is liked by and plays with nearly everyone in her class, but rotates around friendship groups as hates drama, so moves on when things get nasty. But this meant she was hardly anyone's top 3, and was so upset.

The bottom 3 is awful though. A better question might have been 'who do you not play with much but would like to get to know better'

While the information might be useful, the very act of doing this is likely to reinforce or even create new feelings that these are children you don't need to include. That there are children it's ok to ostracise. Children are likely to compare lists and some may even tell others if they were in their bottom 3. It's a really terrible idea.

To all those saying it causes issues in the classroom, it really doesn't. There are many questions and you might write that someone you are least likely to play with is also someone you most would want to work on a group project with for example.

Student Y, who seems joined at the hip to X, wrote ‘please don’t put me in a room with X because they annoy me’. Within another friendship group, several students asked not to be grouped with certain members of that friendship group.

They are 12, so always lots of friendship drama going on, but I was really surprised at some of the responses.

Imagine if the school ran a survey of the teachers, where they were asked which three colleagues they most liked working with, and the three with whom they least liked working.

Yeah. First playtime after the quiz
Who did you put?
I put a, b, c, who did you put?
I put a, d and f...
Enjoy a playground full of kids comparing notes and deciding who they all hate and finding out how many of their classmates put them.

Anyone who thinks thats not what will happen has not spent enough time around children when they think theres no adults around that will tell them off