Is my child's primary school pants?

[TulipVictory]

Please tell me if I'm being dramatic. My daughter had just started year two. I feel like and get the impression the school as a whole isn't very driven. Yes, she can read fairly well now but sentences/spelling and writing is terrible. She brought home some work yesterday that she had done. Some of it was wrong, I said what did your teacher say and she said they didn't look at it. They had a supply for most part of year 1 due to staff sickness. This year she has two teachers and one works Monday, Tuesday and weds morning. The other works Wednesday afternoon and Thursday and Friday 🙄 Their head teacher has been off sick since last year. It just feels like nothing is improving. She brought home last years work book. This was just before she broke up. It's been ticked, no spellings corrected. How are they meant to improve 🙄

Eh?!

Unless you've always believed you're raising the next Einstein, this looks absolutely briliant for a 6 year old (or thereabouts) that's only been in school a year, with massive disruptions to schooling to boot. At this stage being happy and nurtured at school is what counts. Lay off the hothousing and let your child's teachers get on with their jobs.

For a just started year 2 child that is a great piece of work. Her writing is definitely not terrible, I hope you are not telling her it is terrible. It is easily readable and mostly correctly spelled.

The teacher has marked it, corrected some of the errors and your dd can learn from those errors. Teachers generally don't highlight every mistake at that age as some children would just have a page full of errors which would really discourage them.

Nothing wrong with a job share teacher either, some prefer it as if you don't particularly like one teacher your not stick with them 5 days a week!

It's the 1st week and all seems normal, you might have to adjust your expectations though.

It looks like she’s doing really well despite the disruptions we have had. She’s only six

Nah you're fine. Your expectations are just outpacing your child's school journey. She will get there, just not as fast as you are anticipating. It's fine to bring it up with the teacher at parent's evening, in a non confrontational way. They can soon explain their methodology and help you know what to expect.

Teachers would be correcting literally hundreds of spellings a day if they looked at each and everyone.

I've always left the school to its own devices and concentrated on what I could do to help my kids improve.

There's loads of ways to encourage a love of reading and develop their writing and maths.

You'll feel much happier and more in control with this approach.

I'd be pretty impressed with that and my daughter is a fair bit older. I think you are being very critical of the teachers and the work your child completed.

My 6YO just started year two writes like this as well.

Given that he is actually yet to complete an entire year of school in the class room, I think he's doing quite well.

What a sensible bunch of responses. Looks fine to me for Y1, which I taught a couple of years ago. Marking looks fine - they've underlined things. If teachers write comments, half the children in the class can't even read them so feedback was probably also verbal.

She's just started year 2 and has never had a whole year in school that hasn't been badly disrupted. I think her work looks fine.

Having two teachers with a crossover day, is really good and great planning by the school.

I'm not sure how you think correcting every word a child writes will help them to spell any better? They'll just know they did it wrong.
The point of marking is for teachers to assess the learning and inform their planning.

Maybe just let the teachers teach.

There are loads of job shares in our school. What is the issue with that? It feels like a good way of keeping teachers who want to be part time. Most classes in my daughter’s school have either a job share teacher or a job share TA.

No need to eye roll at 2 teachers. Looks fine to me.

They had a supply for most part of year 1 due to staff sickness. This year she has two teachers and one works Monday, Tuesday and weds morning. The other works Wednesday afternoon and Thursday and Friday 🙄

You do realise that supply teachers are, in fact, fully trained and qualified teachers as well, yes? I know, mad! And that two teachers who jobshare can actually be a positive for all the reasons given above.

Infant school teacher here - that writing looks perfectly on target for a new Year 2 child! It's all legible, and spellings are phonetic. Completely normal.

Why the eye roll? Are teacher not allowed to work part time?

@zingally

Infant school teacher here - that writing looks perfectly on target for a new Year 2 child! It's all legible, and spellings are phonetic. Completely normal.

Agree I was a early years teacher not year two but this looks absolutely fine

In Year 1, if the word is phonetically plausible they will not correct it. They will, at some point, be practising spellings separately.
I've worked in many classes that have been a job share as you describe with no problems at all, the half day each will include a handover and they do talk to each other!
Yabu.

@Sarahlou252

In Year 1, if the word is phonetically plausible they will not correct it. They will, at some point, be practising spellings separately. I've worked in many classes that have been a job share as you describe with no problems at all, the half day each will include a handover and they do talk to each other! Yabu.

Yes and it's understandable why. In the ops post water is spelt "wartor" which is a pretty good try. If you correct it and make them feel disheartened then they may feel cautious to spell phonetically again.

Phonetically plausible is my favourite thing ever and I'm very sad that in YR2 (not YR1 which is where this work comes from) they will start correcting spellings that they 'should' know by now.

This is one of my favourites.

Why the 🙄 OP?

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz

Why are you eye rolling at two teachers covering the class in that way? Why shouldnt teachers be allowed to work part time/job share?

Her writing looks fine to me for a just finished Y1 student.

I understand spellings are looked at separately to writing tasks. A task like the one in your photo is where the teacher is (presumably) looking for her to read and understand the question and formulate an answer.

Looking at the answer she gave, she has given the correct sequence of events and written some good sentences.

As above The point of this task might not have been spelling ....

I’m surprised at pp saying spellings aren’t corrected - we used to have weekly spelling tests when I was in ‘top infants’ - aged 6/7 and a league table. We also used to have ‘spelling cards’ to learn from. It was in the ‘80s though!

The eye roll for PT teachers is probably from a lack of consistency and if a parent has a fixed day off and wants to speak to Mrs Smith, as the work was done under them, they can’t as Mrs Smith has the opposite days off.

This year she has two teachers and one works Monday, Tuesday and weds morning. The other works Wednesday afternoon and Thursday and Friday 🙄

Why are you eye rolling at at a job share?

I also don’t understand what is wrong with the work. Spellings don’t need to be corrected for every piece of work.