to think that school plays and other non curricular activities should be inclusive?

[PosieComeHereMyPreciousParker]

DS1 has just come home with the four lines he has to learn for an assembly. He said he wanted to be one of the four soldiers, but he's a narrator instead. Before he named the four soldiers I could have listed them myself, the four most able boys in the class. Am I unreasonable to think that a good teacher would use instances like this to include pupils that aren't top of the class? It wouldn't have mattered if DS1 hadn't been picked if it was four other boys, but the same four as always just seems a bit lazy.

The teacher has asked to borrow DS1's coat for one of the soldiers....talk about insult to injury.

Think as long as school is trying to give as many children as possible speaking parts that is probably the best they can do tbh. They will always upset someone, although I can see it is upsetting. Another point is that the bright ones do not always have fantastic self esteem.

I tend to agree - obviously when they're very young it's so much easier to pick the ones who can read their lines or remember a complete sentence , but once they're in years 3+ then I think there's a case for redressing the balance - DS spent three years sitting on teachers' laps being physically restrained from running away in assemblies / nativity plays, but this term for the first time they gave him an important line in his class assembly and he stood up and shouted it out loud - it was a huge breakthrough for him, and everyone was really proud (including the mature, self-confident girls in his class who've been doing all the heavy lifting in school plays since they were three).

Christmas is the time of year I am most glad not to be a primary teacher.

Children also give talks in class and that is when every one of them is encouraged to be loud, slow, expressive, etc etc. Sometimes a child is given a school role that involves talking to other classes, so they can grow in confidence then as well.

When it comes to a big public performance we just need to be able to bluddy hear 'em.

The fact these kids are very bright will be incidental. I know plenty of very bright kids who do not want to - and are not particularly good at - perform(ing) in front of an audience.

No one wants to sit through an inaudible assembly. Really truly.

There are dozens of other ways that confidence in speaking and performing is encouraged. Just because you don't see them doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

I ran an afterschool drama club for a term at a previous TA job. I gave the lead role to the least able reader in Y4 (accidentally, oops! Didn't occur to me he might struggle). 3 weeks after we started, his teacher had noticed a difference in his reading and his big brother (who picked him up) said he was behaving better at home.

I had never worked with kids that young before (I mostly worked with teens before that) and used words like "environment", "destruction", "catastrophe" "explosion" etc... It didn't occur to me that that would cause a problem. It didn't - the more able readers and I just helped the less able to sound out the word and explain what it meant. No big deal.

Being an able reader doesn't matter. That can esily be overcome. It's about a loud voice, a steady gaze and if you;re really lucky a bit of acting.

The two kids who got the lead in the end of term play last year are Mary and Joseph this year - both of them do drama at the well known drama school afiliated with the school so no surprise there. My DD also does drama but not the same one and is to be an Angel yet again (3 years running). She doesn't mind she says but it does seem annoying. i'm sure a part of it is "laziness" on the teachers part because that way she knows these kids will def deliver and the play is an success (in her eyes) otherwise she may get a nose picker or giggler. IMO it makes a play more real to see nose pickers etc plus they are only 5/6/7 yrs old, no-one expects too much just a chance for their child to shine for a change!

One point that people often seem to overlook- most children are in a different class each year, so a different teacher is assigning the roles. As parents you know that such-as-such was Joseph last year, the teachers often don't. And while we could spend time asking the class what roles they had in Yr1, Yr2 and so on to make sure that everyone is included, we'd probably rather be teaching them.

(That being said, I can understand the frustration, and do try to choose people other than the 'obvious'.)

The choice of production can make a difference. The big KS1 production when my DD1 was in year 2 was dominated by one very bright, very confident child because she was the only one who could have carried off (brilliantly) a very demanding part, where she was on-stage and talking or reacting almost all the time. Nobody could have argued with the casting, but it was difficult for the others to shine.

Two years later, DD2 was in a production with far more small speaking parts, and there were some fantastic performances from children whose voices I barely recognised. It was the best school production I have seen, both for the audience and the cast.

Needless to say, my two were lurking in non-speaking roles in their respective plays as they are both allergic to drama. They possibly would have benefited from being obliged to take small speaking parts, but I appreciate that the KS1 teachers had a lot of children to accommodate. At least with the second play, everybody who wanted to act got the chance.

All the children in my daughters class read and speak wonderfully yet last years teacher chose the same two girls for all the many main parts throughout year 2. They also got double the rewards that many other children got and it's all down the teacher having favorites. The teacher is seen by most as unproffessional/hormonal and seems unable to build good home-school links.

I'm shocked at the PTA casting couch! You know, this thread is dredging up a lot of deep-felt anger from decades ago.

I'd have loved to be an angel. I was always stuck in the choir and we didn't even get so much as a tea towel on our heads.

But the biggest humiliation was when I was cast as a 'Goose a-Laying'. I had to squat and produce a hefty great papier mache egg. Mum told me just to be the best bloody goose a-laying the audience had ever seen.

Oh, ffs, is this old chestnut really going round again?

"The children of the PTA members were always picked for the leads in our school. Nothing funny going on there was there?"

I mean really. It's such lazy stereotyping. Do you seriously believe this would be allowed to happen in schools nowadays?

Meh It's a school play - they pick a child for each part. Be glad he's not cow's bum or something

Aaaah the first school plays parts thread of the festive season. Christmas is well and truly coming...

OK - we sit there and we deliberately think about which parents we'll decide to piss off each year. If you go in to complain about homework - that's at least three years as third sheep in payment.

I would type a serious post about how we spend ages choosing parts, how we often ask the kids, find they don't want a big part - then their parents come in playing hell on... but hubby's bugging me to go to bed, and, to be honest I've typed it that many times I really can't be arsed anymore (go search on Primary Ed).

Never let the truth get in the way of a good teacher-bash.

I'm a drama teacher (secondary, not primary) with 14 years of teaching behind me. Believe me, you cannot instantly boost a child's self esteem by forcing them to stand up in assembly and read. If they're not comfortable with it, then it can have the opposite effect.

Parents at our primary school complained that it was the same confident and able pupils picked for the main roles every year and wanted to see their own unconfident yet spoilt children in the lead roles.

We did this to see what would happen. What a laugh catastrophe! Most of the "audience" left before half time in a fit of giggles!

So sad for the performers but a great big comeuppence for the parents of the most unpopular pupils of the school

Why does strike out never work for me grrrr!

You know, you'd think I'd learn not to open these threads. As a teacher it's soul destroying!

You plan an assembly, organise parts, costumes, work, everything else that goes with it. If you choose the loud children to talk you 'choose the same children all the time' if you give someone else a chance there are complaints because no-one could hear anything. Every time one of the key people is off sick anyway, so you have to have a rapid rejig.

It takes over your life for a week or more, and out of a class of 30 children you perhaps get one parent saying 'thankyou' without also adding a 'but'.

Oh, and Fishtank, you need to strike out each word in a phrase so -confident- -and- -able- (but with two -- not one)

Oh the Christmas plays, Riv. I had tried to block them from my mind (I've been at home with DD for the past 18 months, so no longer teaching). I was talking 'just' for a class assembly which is a week of preparation. The Christmas rehearsals start after half-term and suck out your soul go on for MONTHS.