To be fed up with my DD having to prop up the less able children

[endlesschatonthecarpet]

OK, I know I probably am being unreasonable and await a flaming! My daughter (in year 1) is very quick, very clever but not blessed with much patience! Because she is one of the top in the class she always seems to be paired with a talk partner who is finding the work more of a struggle. I completely understand that this can be useful sometimes, but it seems to happen every day and some days my DD comes hope very fed up and grumpy because she's had to "waste time". She gets what the task is once the teacher has done the initial set up and is keen to get going. This endless sitting on the carpet with whiteboards talking to another child who is not working at the same level is doing her head in! Now, I fully accept that the teacher has to consider the needs of all the children - not just my precious DD, but couldn't she at least sometimes just send the more able children off to get started while she does a bit more work with the others or pair up the bright children so they can really develop their ideas?

Obviously I've said to my DD that she needs to get on with whatever the teacher asks her to do and haven't given her any indication that I share her feelings about this practice but I do feel really frustrated on my daughter's behalf.
Anyone else feel the same or am I alone in my unreasonableness?

Why is the UK still so fixated on ability? How do you know that the less able in Y1 (if I'm not mistaken this means 6 years old)? The comments from teachers about it all are depressing. How do you know the slow learner in Y1 isn't a high flyer in Y2 or Y3 etc or am I missing something??

I can see both sides really. I can see how helping a less able child would help reinforce the other child's knowledge on a subject and anything that enables children to work together and come up with a whole range of ideas and experiences is a good thing.

However if a child is repeatedly unable to complete their own work,
A child constantly gets credit for something they haven't actually helped with, or it means that it masks the fact that a child doesn't actually understand the work and hides the fact that a child genuinely needs help with something and doesn't get the support as completed work means teacher has no idea there's a problem, then yes that's a huge issue in my eyes!

Hamishbear, you're not missing anything. It all seems to be a load of hand wringing cobblers to me.

I was/ am lucky enough to have a high IQ (my EQ seems lacking though) and was happy to help others. I went to a private school throughout and a good university. I was always in the top set vying with a couple of others for top place. Yet my group of friends were in all 4 sets and we are all still great friends 20 years later. Funnily enough, it's the girl who was in div 4 for eng, french and maths who has her own business now and has a vair nice life. One of my 'competitors' is just scraping by as her career was far too stressful to combine properly with children.

Give up the level of competition and concentrate on teaching your children kindness FGS.

I think if it was year 10 I'd worry, but Year 1 does seem a bit over-anxious - unless she is continually being used for do this and never gets to work on new stuff for herself and interact with the other bright kids in the class

I need to dust off my child dev notes... There is a theory that if a child 'teaches' another child, then that reinfrces what they have learned. So if someone explains a theory to me, I would try to explain it to someone else to make sure I uunderstood it and wasn't merely parroting what they had said.

It is useful... But to a point. Otherwise the 'teacher' child gets a bit bores and fed up. There needs to be a limit to the time taken doing this - and bright kids also need extra work or books/teacher time for them to keep motivated.

Speaking for myself, being paired in this way is the one thing out of all my schooling that I have found most helpful in my career.

Basically, it taught me that other people don't see what is in my head unless I explain it to them. Which is something I spend a lot of time trying to explain to my students. I didn't feel held back: I felt I was learning something.

But obviously it needs to be a small part of a child's overall learning.

It is a very small part of the primary school curriculum cory. Which is why I don't understand this thread.

Hamish, that is the sad truth.

I did not know this a few years ago! But once you are marked as bottom table material (they call it "apples" or "triangles" or whatever) you will be there for the rest of your school career, it seems.

My oldest DS only started taking off with maths at age 8, I once asked the teacher, very carefully, if he could do some of the middle or top table stuff as he was getting bored in maths. She then had a look at his work and was completely surprised; "Oh wow, I had not realised he was that good at maths, he didn't use to be, better move him up. " next parent evening: "your DS has made amazing progress"....what a surprise.

About the OP: It will happen, that is how schools work. My other DS always had to sit with a child with very serious disruptive behaviour as my DS calmed him down and did not mind being occasionally pushed or punched. He often had his school work ripped in 2 by this child. Teacher told me this as if it was something I should feel happy about...

I am not sure what the answer is

Perhaps the teacher is hoping that this exercise will help her learn to be more patient with others?

Or patience generally.

OP how many days has this happened? Do you think she could be exagerating?

IME school has changed and i don't think school is all about sitting at a desk head down and getting on with it,
when i was at school (in the dark ages) you were not even allowed to turn round and talk to anybody , now children sit in groups are encouraged to talk about their work ask questions and taught how to co oporate and communicate that has to be a good thing ?

"How do you know the slow learner in Y1 isn't a high flyer in Y2 or Y3 etc or am I missing something??"

You're apparently missing that it is irrelevant whether today's "slow learner" us tomorrow's "high flier" (ick to both).

Both children should be challenged at school based on their current level of ability.

It is not the responsibility of 6 year olds to bring other 6 year olds on.

Partnering should be beneficial to both children.

OP - I know where you are coming from.

We live in France and my DC are balanced bilinguals. We pay for them (or paid a few years ago) to attend an English class for bilingual kids....only one prob, none of the other kids were truly bilingual.

So, my DD who was speakinh native speaker level English, learning poetry at home and watching Pride and Prejudice on DVD at home, was in a class with children who had one English-speaking parent but nowhere near balanced bilingualism. The other kids would say things like, "Je vais kicker le ballon" and "Je cherche le black cat".

Well, after a few weeks, the other parents were all saying to me how marvellous it was to have TinyGreythorne in their kids class, how helpful she was, how she explained things to them.

Then the report came home at Christmas and the teacher wrote, "TinyGreythorne is always so willing to help other children who are struggling with comprehension".

Overall, I thought it was lovely that she was helping others and taking a leadership role in the class (small class of 7 children) and flourishing in terms of confidence because she clocked that her English was so much better.

But I don't think those classes contributed anything to her English. And that is what we were paying for!

My feeling is that the parteneering happens for a very small portion of the day, or week; that we are talking about 6 year olds, some will be more advanced, some will have behaviour issues, some will be able to read fluently, other will struggle a bit. It's really not a big deal, and I think that some of the comments here have made me realise just how much of a stigma is attached to young children who are late bloomers, or have a learning difficulty, or have a dissability. Really, it's a very bad depiction of the reality of having a child who is not top of the class or who might have a speech difficulty or disorder, or indeed a processing dissorder. It makes me feel very, very sad that as parents you are not actually encouraging your child to integrate, learn with/not exclude children who are, for whatever reason, towards the bottom of the class. Very much of an eye opener. I thought we had moved on since the 60s 70s. But clearly, we have not, and it's a very sad reality. If you don't encourage your children to work together, and respect, and be understanding of children with learning difficulties, what chance have we got. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

I just think it needs to be monitored and done carefully! I have Been that kid who has been paired with a brighter kid and had to watch while they work on things I had no clue about and just had to say my bit I was told to when presenting the project. And I have also been the kid paired with a child who lovely as she was her spelling was very poor and she was sat next to
Me so I could help her. I ended up having to miss play time to finish the work I failed to complete in class as every thirty seconds I had to stop and help this girl spell something and it was impossible to concentrate on what I was doing. Done correctly it's a valuable educational method but other children should never be used to tack the slack off the teachers . :)

Blueberry
you suggestion that people should feel ashamed is so misplaced.

So, parents who want their own children to be stretched academically should be ashamed?

No they should encourage children of all abilities to work, include, and learn together with children of all abilities.

Hamishbear Most schools use the initials HA, MA and LA in their planning to indicate which groups are doing what work. These are often understood as High, Middle and Low Ability.

When I did my training (about 5 years ago) the university went to great pains to say we should understand these as Higher, Middle and Lower Attaining.

This says nothing about ability and doesn't label a child as more or less 'able' in the early years of their education - many people will know that once you have a label like that, it can be hard to escape it; rather it just says where the child is working currently.

Good schools and good teachers might still use the word 'ability' out of habit, but really we know that that is fluid. Children have different strengths in different areas - so a child who find calculation tricky, might really excel at space, shape and measures; a child who excels at writing might have problems working with others...

Seeing children as currently being higher, middler and lower attaining says nothing about their innate or absolute ability, rather that it recognises exactly what you're suggesting should be recognised, that at different stages in their development; with different external factors (e.g. new baby, parents divorcing, illness); and with different strengths and weaknesses, children attain differently.

Or at least that's the theory. Chandon might not agree. The teacher should be giving all children the opportunities to achieve the next step. Sadly though, it does happen when there are so many children in the class and the teacher has so many other boxes to tick.

The reason parents are so fixated on ability is because it's quite often how they judge whether or not they and their children are 'better' than the next child/parent.

oh and schools are so focused on 'ability' because it generally dictates outcomes which is what the government is interested in. [weary emoticon]

I'm not even going to apologise for my overuse of smilies!

Talk partnering usually only happens in literacy or numeracy and only for a small amount of the carpet time (about 5 mins) and won't take place every day anyway.

So in literacy, you might use it to prompt ideas for writing because if you can't 'say a sentence' (and this just means formulate, it doesn't exclude non verbal children), you can't write a sentence. But you wouldn't do it at the start of every literacy session because it wouldn't be appropriate or necessary to do that.

"The reason parents are so fixated on ability is because it's quite often how they judge whether or not they and their children are 'better' than the next child/parent."

Wow, sweeping generalisation.

Don't you think it important for parents to be aware of their child's level of attainment? And to be concerned if their child is not be challenged at school?

Or is it only OK to be concerned if your child has a low level of attainment?

Knowing how your child is doing at school need have nothing to do with competitiveness, and it's rather glib of you to suggest that's the only reason parents care.

In my DD's class year 3 they have table partners but these are changed half termly.They work with these partners on some pieces of work and after half term all tables are changed including seating. by the end of the school year they have worked with pretty much everyone. I dont mind this as DD has learnt to work with all abilities, she said she does not mind this, what upsets her is working with children who get into trouble all the time as she says she cant do her work. there was a child who has been the bane of her school life since reception and who she was paired with, i swiftly asked the teacher to separate them by explaining the bullying this child had done to DD prior, she was happy to do this.

LeQueen - I agree very strongly indeed with your last post. I also think that there is a lot of danger in insisting that able DCs work well below their ability level. Some will "just" be frustrated. Others will switch onto automatic pilot and may in all likelihood have a very hard time switching their brain back on later in life, when effort is required. Others will become mentally ill (anorexia etc).

You would be right if the entire school day was taken up with such activity. But i would eat my hat if it is! And certainly my ds really enjoys and gets a lot from the 30 minutes he spends helping the younger ones in the school.

"I don't think it very kind or compassionate to constantly frustrate a young child, who is keen as mustard to strive ahead with more challenging work."

No, it's not.

It's not very kind to the child they are working with either.

But it might be easier.

I feel bloody sorry for the four year old, whose parents are writing him off "as not very bright"!

Children develop at different rates, and will have different strengths. Sometimes, just sometimes, the four year old who cannot read, becomes the seven year old who reads Watership Down. It's not unheard of!