Aibu about this dictation based Art homework

[fastweb]

Third week of school
Equivalent to British year 7
Art class
The kids had a dictation about the history of art.
It's about one and a half sides of A4 with not large writing, skipping one line between lines, he thinks he failed to get down about a 1/4 of what was dictated.
He is not great at dictation because he either writes slowly in an effort to keep it legible, and misses chunks of sentences OR he speeds up...and neither of us can read a word of it. This has been an issue since the first dictation in year 1. We've practiced extensively over the last 2 years, but while he has got better his speed still isn't fast enough to keep up and get an accurate complete copy of the dictation.
The teacher then told the kids to study the dictation they produced for an oral test.
He will need to be able to answer questions worded in a way that as closely as possible quotes from the dictation.
Except no matter how hard he tried to memorize the dictation he wouldn't be able to achieve that level of accuracy, and would most likely fail, or score low on the test, which will harm his GPA. Because in the absence of a clean copy, his study is based on a text that has some missing bits, confused bits that don't make sense and some bits that defy all attempts to decipher them.
As a result we have had to leave the study to the last minute because it has taken me 2 days to cobble together a "clean" copy after playing telephone ping pong (of the mutual dictation kind) with a couple of mums who have a child in the same class.
Art is on 2 consecutive days, so the above telephone ping pong won't always be an option thanks to the time frame.
This is far from an uncommon practice, the chances are we will be facing the same issue in all other subjects through out the year.
I appreciate that a mainly British forum can't help much with the more typical "and what to do about it" phase of a question like this, given that the system in Britain is very different.
My main objective is to get opinions, parental and professional, regarding the extent to which the practice is unreasonable (or not) and why/why not it is good teaching practice.
Because conversations with family, friends and other parents leave me feeling like I must be bonkers to take the view that dictation/memorise resultant student copy of dictation is something more serious than a minor annoyance.
My son has been back at Italian state school for about three and a half weeks after two years of home ed.
And I am already flooded with such a sense of deja vu. Me being very hacked off with teaching practice, everybody else regarding anything above mild annoyance as being a massive over reaction, me then wondering if perhaps I am slightly bonkers to take the view I do.
Is it me ? Are they right and I am making a fuss about nothing ? Could this be me seeking out ways to find fault with the school system here (again) because I am culturally prejudiced against it and the dictation thing is actually not that bad an idea ?
I absolutely want honest opinion. If this is about a problem with me or my attitude or blowing "nit picks" up out of proportion, my approach to dealing with the school issue has to radically change, as does my mind set.
If it not me I need external confirmation of my viewpoint so I can move forward without second guessing myself on a five minutely basis, and approach the school to seek some changes with rather more faith in myself that I am doing the right thing, than I have at this minute.
I'd rather find out I am unreasonable and plain old wrong than be stuck in this limbo of not being sure what's what anymore.
Cos at least then I could start doing something about it, be a more effective parent to my son and stop feeling so miserable and het up(what with all the second guessing of myself) cos I'd know where I stand and would just have to deal with the practical side of things.

I also think Bonsoir is giving good advice - worth following.

I agree.

Wednesday youth club is getting the chop.

I won't find a tutor who will teach technique in these parts, the most qualified to do the job are the people omitting the technique/teaching stage in the classroom.

But I can follow up and expand on links re his grip and give him additional practice. With DH, cos my accent has never been a huge help in dictation, so I lumber him with the actual reading bit.

So far my list of "things to do" is

Improve his speed/accuracy at dictation.

Improve his extended reading out loud (great intonation, unfortunate tendency to say a word similar to that on the page, but not the one actually written as he tires towards the end of a longer peice)

Teach him all of set theory

Which is doable, as long as nothing else gets added to the list, because the homework load is going to increase as the year goes on and we are time squished as it is.

DH ended up doing his music homework last night as it is becuase I am not having his bedtime become a variable. He needs his sleep, especially with the very early start he has.

He is in a right snit this morning becuase it wpuld appear his pillow ate all his art and geography test prep, leaving his brain empty and two public interrogations to face.

I think he is more concerned about the potential humilation of scewing up the tests in full view of the whole class than he is the about any poor grades.

There is the potential for any jeering or laughter to be utilized and explpited as a "motivator" to do better next time and he is well out of practice with that aspect. It's not really something you can (or I am prepared) to replicate at home. So he's going to need some time to regrow a thicker skin in order to deal with that aspect.

I've told him to immagine them all in their underwear, which at least cracked a smile.

Fingers crossed.

I can live with him working with DH in the future if, and only if, it is a wholehearted postive choice from a very real personal interest and clear apptitude. And part of why DH is so sucessful compared to most is becuase as a law graduate he stands out in a field where most people failed to get their middle school diploma. He can relate and engage with clients on their own level, they often have aquaintences in common, his contacts are impressive...it all helps. Especially in a stagnant market where people are more prone to selling their heirlooms than buying (or having restored) their revolting, dusty, dark, ugly antiques.

I have to say that I can't possibly immagine what has gone wrong nature/nurture wise if my boy hasn't inherited my favouring of IKEA.

I'm going to push languages with him with all my might, even if in the WCS he gives up on academics I can give him a fighting chance with four languages up his sleeve.

Spanish is going great, I started him a year early so the pressure is off at school and anyway he really loves learning a foreign language, cos for him it has real novelty value, and he finds it easy.

Was going to start German a year early too, but just not sure where I'm going to fit it in now.

I suppose if things start to look really bad I could always downsize the house to one the size of an alsation's kennel, and open a language school in town to ensure my child has a job to go to in the future.

If you can't beat them, join them right ?

In my classroom I have a whiteboard and an interactive whiteboard, and a selection of coloured pens. I also have a wireless keyboard and mouse for passing around the kids, a webcam for projecting up work, a microphone (I record them singing songs about formulae which they can download on their mobiles from my little corner of the internet where I post all their homework). Some of their homework is online and self-marking. And I'm a fan of games-based learning.

I reckon a classroom swap would make excellent telly. I've never even written on a blackboard!

Oh I want your classroom.

I have a whiteboard and the teeny, quite limited interactive whiteboard app on the ipad for my private students.

Most of the homework is either interactive or downloadable, and we communicate mainly by email.

I fI could have that with knobs on for a classroom setting I think I'd cry with joy.

I tried to get my hands on the interactive whiteboard hidden away at my son's school when I taught there.

But they said no, cos it might get dirty if the packaging came off.

Ps

For the classroom swap.

Do not wear black.

I personally never emerge without looking distinctly snow womanish.

Are blackboards that bad? Have never seen anything else in use other than an office (where we have whiteboards) but from the non-professional point of view of someone who just writes and reads off them, I cannot really see the difference, except that chalk washes off well and markers not necessarily so. But maybe I am just old.

Jokes aside, I read this thread in the middle of the night and am now back to add what I hope can be at least mildly helpful. Background is that I grew up in Italy but have spent most of my professional life (and postgrad education) in the UK and Belgium.

I agree with the practical suggestions Bonsoir has made, but not with her evaluation of the ability to take quick verbatim notes as useless. I have found it very useful both at university (where took summary notes with verbatim bits where necessary) and at work. I am a lawyer and when you are interviewing clients or taking evidence it is important sometimes to use the exact words someone says, without distracting them by asking to repeat etc. So the skill does have some use. :-)

The other useful aspect of dictation, going back to schooldays, is that, once mastered, it makes for quicker studying. I remember having to spend much less time reviewing the texts that had been dictated (both in England and in Italy) compared to the ones in the textbooks because, as we were told a thousand times a year, "qui scribit bis legit" (he who writes, reads twice).

If I may add a practical suggestion on improving the skill, I would suggest trying a fountain pen with a medium/thick nib. Like your DS, I find my hand aches if I have to write for a long time with a biro, but with a fountain pen I can write faster, more neatly and without getting a sore hand. You are probably now going to think I am a time traveller from 100 years ago, but give it a go, it might help.

And a final word of hope: dictation pretty much stops in the scuola media. Have never heard of it being used after 14, other than for dictating the titles of essays, questions in written tests or language teaching purposes (e.g.English/Latin).

"I agree with the practical suggestions Bonsoir has made, but not with her evaluation of the ability to take quick verbatim notes as useless."

Where did I make such an evaluation?

I read most of the OP thinking you were talking about the German school system. It turns out there are more countries teaching like that than I had thought.

If you can't send him to an international school in Italy, would it be possible for him to go to a boarding school in the UK? There are state boarding schools where you only have to pay the boarding costs, not the tuition, therefore they're much cheaper. He would then have the (fantastic) social life that comes with boarding school and an education which is more in keeping with what you are familiar with. If you chose a school which teaches Italian then he would probably be able to do the GCSE a couple of years early which is a major confidence boost. Obviously boarding school isn't for every individual or family though.

Bonsoir: I thought you' d said dictation did not build useful skills and that you remembered nothing of the lessons (history and geography) that used it most. However, I did not re-read the thread before replying so apologies if I misconstrued and then misrepresented your opinions. I must say I was surprised as normally I agree with what you say!

Let me clarify (though I think I was perfectly clear on this thread): I said that the dictation/memorisation/regurgitation method was (a) a wildly inefficient long-term learning strategy (b) useless for teaching children how to sort and prioritise information (a critical skill in the modern world).

I do think dictation is an important thing to master... Although perhaps not as important as to be able to write one's own notes on a lecture, ie not writing down word for word but being able to pick out the important stuff from the teacher's words. You learn so much more that way.

But what the flippety fuck has dictation got to do with art, what a waste. Tell them to, I dunno, draw something?!? Or maybe research some art history themselves so everyone comes up with different info?

DSD has been getting fact-recall history HW in yr9 and it's driving us nuts. She doesn't learn anything, it's got no context (they aren't even on one topic, just random facts), but they are told to learn it for a test... The test never happens though

The test never happens though

The art and geography tests disappeared into the ether on Friday too.

Art test was supposed to be during the technology lesson. But overnight technology lesson turned back into a technology lesson (still not sure what that subject is about, must flip through two enourmous tomes) and art put back on Monday where it belongs. So the test will now be then.

And the geography teacher swaped with the history teacher on Friday, so Geography test will now be on Tuesday, during history lesson. Allegedly.

Gloriously enough this weekend we have also aquired the need to study for tests on

Monday
Epica
Art (moved from Friday, where it had been moved, and then moved again)
English (yay !)
Music

Tuesday
Geography
Italian Grammar
Science

Friday
History

And that is before more tests get added throughout the coming week

And I don't know which ones will happen, and which will not.

I have a temperature of 38 degrees after medication, and have lost all sense of proportion, becuase I've decided it is entirley reasonable to hope the school burns down tonight, is closed for months, so we can catch up on all the homework set so far.

In better news, I teach a chemist, lovely girl (well woman, but I've been teaching her for so long I still think of her as a girl, to aviod feeling old) and after telling her about my set theory woes has offered her engineer finacee as tutor in exchange for English lessons for him too.

Wednesday youth club has been cancelled and replaced with maths tutoring and dictation practice to howls of outrage from DS who burst into tears and said "The point of going to school is to spend MORE time with my friends and you're going to make it so I get to spend LESS time with them than I did when I was HEed"

I guess it was a bit optimistic to hope that at 11 yo he would understand and just take it all on the chin.

Right, off to get today's homework session started so it is done in time so he can go play this afternoon.

Unless somebody calls the health authority and calls in a fake asbestos alert on the classrooms.

That would take weeks to resolve and keep the school closed for the interim.

(removes thermometer from underarm and peers at result to ensure that delirous state still account for extreme thoughts in head)

< hopeful emoticon>

oh, actually there is a spanish test on monday too.

So the entire school day on Monday is tests.

That is after doing almost nothing but entry tests for each subject during the first week of school.

The kids only went back on the 13th.

I'm giving myslef pep talks about not be overly negative and talking myself into loathing the school and it's methods.

But it is quite an uphill task.

Off to join DS in making 50 flashcards for spanish vocab test.

Good job he likes spanish.

Are all the kids in his year working this hard?

I am at the pristine unused IWB. What were they waiting for?!

I was educated in the French system and this sounds drearily familiar. I don't have many practical suggestions, because I think the gulf between uk and continental ideas about education is so vast as to be pretty much unbridgeable, so convincing your ds's teachers of the uselessness of rote forms of learning would be tantamount to asking them to imbibe an entirely different philosophy of learning. A tall order. On the plus side, if your son can combine the best elements of both systems, he'll be set up for life. Having been to a uk university, I was astounded to find in my first year that some of my fellow students had no idea how to structure an essay or take verbatim notes. The apparently useless disciplines of rote learning also mean that memorisation is a doddle compared to those educated in a more analytical system. But sympathies! I still shudder at the memory of Sunday night tears before Monday morning's ritual humiliation - oral Latin test in front of the whole class.

the other point of difference is that imo, on the continent, there is absolutely no sense that children need to be happy at school. If they are, it's an added bonus, but even then there's a strong undercurrent of thought that actually, if children are enjoying themselves, it's probably because they are having too easy a ride. It's a really pernicious philosophy, and one that there isn't a great deal of point in challenging - it runs too deep.

Sorry if I sound defeatist!

Re the IWB, as long as it is unopened there is no onus on anybody to use it and upset the staus quo in terms of expectations ?

My friends can't tell me how hard DS's friends are working, cos when I ask how their kids found the set theory, or the art homework, or anything else they just say they don't know, they haven't asked, what is set theory?, and the homework is the child's relm which they did in half an hour tops after lunch (all of it, all the homework not just one subject) before going out to play.

Fat lot of use they are to me

I do know that one parent (who hangs out with DH's friends at the bar in the morning) told DH that she makes her much older son do her daughter's homework (the DD is in my DS's class) becuase she says that It is too much and her daughter comes home without a clue where to start.

But she is unusually candid.

The only kid I have first hand experience of is the kid that comes here, I was suspitous last "study group" at the speed at which things were claimed to have been done. But didn't want to stick my oar in an embarass DS.

A bit of pressure on DS later and he confessed that friend had suggested "guess the answer" and "think of excuses teacher will accept so I don't get interrogated tommorow" and "weight the odds that this test won't happen so let's skip learning it" and "its only reading/studying sans test, so lets just say we did it".

Friend is the most adorable kid, an absolute joy to have over, but I'm going to have to be careful to make sure that the "study group" doesn't decend into a "how to dispatch homework at top speed but learn nothing" group.

In better news, he had to do a review unit for maths homework today on set theory.

By george I think he's got it (:

I'm amazed the alps didn't blow away with my huge sigh of relief.

Perfect it is not, but he could pass a test as long as it wasn't pitched way high or contained an unrealistic number of questions for the time frame.

In all seriousness I credit you with this result, alone I would have run around like a headless chicken with maths panic.

"Sorry if I sound defeatist"

I think that is realist rather than defeatist.

I wish they'd do some work on essays here.

They don't even write them much at uni level, it's mainly eat book, then vomit book on tutor in parrot fashion oral tests.

Well I would if I wasn't going through the test result data from the flashcard software to see how he did in the prep for various tests on Monday.

He's gone to bed all cheerful.

I assume becuase he hasn't seen the data that the flashcard software is showing me.

Is it possible that somebody subbed my son's brain for a sieve ?

Do I need to plug his ears to keep all the info in his head ?

But then again, he has no issue remembering the names and the evolutions of millions of pokemon

Fastweb, don't go giving me the credit, I am awed by the amount of work you are putting into your son's education :)

I would have been utterly stuck love without help, I didn't even know what it was called in English.

I think my work put into his education might actually be part of the problem.

He was the only child called upon to do the geog test.

He is bemused that he scored lowest in the Italian test, when a not insignificant number of students were given far smaller passages to read and struggled with the vocab/intonation while he got a far bigger chunk and made few mistakes (we've done daily prac in reading epics out loud and dealing with the old fashioned vocab for 3 weeks solid)

The art/ dication test never happened, they got a draw a picture test instead.

He and his friend sit next to each other, so came back here with virtually identical drawings.

One with a fail mark, one with a good pass mark.

I'm leaving room for paranoia on my part, but he paniced when he did a maths test and sneaked it home rather than hand it in the first week back. I checked the test before I realised what he had done, about 80% correct. Took it back to the school apologising profusely, the vice president was lovely about it, results just came back in with him almost at the bottom of the class with a score indicated as

Reading this thread, one might think that the Italian school system is antiquated and inefficient and clearly outperformed by the UK's. Not so. The OECD's ongoing study on education places them pretty much neck to neck. [http://www.pisa.oecd.org/dataoecd/54/12/46643496.pdf PISA] OP, I don't have practical advice but I think perhaps you need to embrace the Italian way of doing things. It may be different from the way you are accustomed to but it produces results which by and large are as good as those we have in England.

Gah, link didn't work

PISA

PISA doesn't measure advanced skills, though, just basic ones.

Italy battles Spain, Portugal and Greece for a place at the bottom when comparable countries are placed in a PISA league table.

If you look at your table again, rather than neck and neck

The Uk scores AT OECD average in 5 areas and ABOVE OECD average in 3 areas.

Italy scores BELOW OECD average in every single area.

That is not neck and neck.

And there is additional context to the lagging behind.

Italy has one of of of the lowest ratios of students to teacher. It also has one of the highest rates of investment of tax euros in education, per child

Italy doesn't suffer a good number of the social issues known to impact attainment on anything like the same scale as many comparable countries.

At one point PISA had a page called "The Italian Paradox" examining the contrast between the above conditions and the persistant failure to raise the average standard of attainment. Their verdict was the relatively high levels of funding had been used to create a massive body of poorly trained, under paid teachers and support staff.

I can't embrace that.

All I can do is support my son in improving the skills he needs not to sink, like rote memorisation, dictation, oral interrogation etc.

Which I have been doing to the best of my ability, but readily admit I am frustrated and het up with having to attempt to do that within the time constraints of a homework Tsunami as well as try to teach him the concepts that were "skim taught" at school.

However compared to the start of the thread I do feel less overwelmed and less ready to divorce my husband and run like fuck with child tucked under my arm

In no small part thanks to the people on this thread who have offered suggestions, advice and support.

For which I proffer a heartfelt

And thanks too for letting me whinge, wail and rant. Sometimes I think I'll explode if I have to smile, put a face on it and keep quiet for yet another day.

....

Today's update

His pillow did not eat the two pages memorised for a history test today during the night.

He still rembered most of it this morning.

Cross your fingers that it doesn't all fall put of his head by 10.40