to think that my daughter's school is expecting too much of an 8-year old...

[LongtimeinBrussels]

My 8-year old daughter has a geography test tomorrow. She has to learn the names of: the five countries surrounding Belgium (well if you include the UK plus the North Sea), the ten Belgian provinces (counties) plus the main city in each, the three official languages, the three different sorts of relief and the three main rivers. She has to be able to place all of these on a map (she's going to be given a blank one to fill in) and the spelling has to be correct otherwise she will lose a mark. Given that it'll be out of ten she could easier end up with zero!

All three of my children were born in Belgium so am not able to compare this to what would be expected in the UK. It just seems a bit extreme for an 8-year old.

easily end up with zero!

you lucky thing

is it a local school?

So she has around 29 names to memorise and where they are on a map. Some will be able to do it, others will do some.
It does seem a bit harsh to combine a spelling test with this, too, and have so few marks to give overall. I would have thought at least 58 marks (one for getting the right name/place and one for correct spelling). Something like that.
Is it a just for fun thing? Don't take it seriously. Just let her do what she can. Try to enjoy finding out where the places are and don't stress over getting it right every time.
It might be worth speaking to the teacher just to find out what the intention is behind it so that you can help better at home. Or if your dd isn't upset by it, just let it go.

LongtimeinBrussels ds who is 9 and in year 4 had to do nearly the same thing but for Germany before Christmas - all the neighbouring countries and the county names plus main cities etc and they got a map in the test to fill in. He managed it but we had to learn and memorize the counties and the spellings were hard for some , it took ages but I suppose that was the first really hard thing they'd ever had and they have to slowly get used to learning things off by heart in the next few years.

I wish our schools would do a bit more of this. Just a bit of useful general knowledge that doesn't necessarily get covered in the curriculum.

Even if your dd doesn't get good marks hopefully she will have learnt something interesting.

Oh we had to do this - with the world, seas, continents, some countries - including different African countries AND flags. It was called a World Quiz.

I wouldn't stress about it. It's not too much, and they have surprising memories. Quite useful information too when you think about it.

I think the spelling would scupper ds. He would adore all the other things (a bit nerdy) but would be distraught when he lost all the marks (as he no doubt would) for incorrect spelling

nope .. I don't think that's too much for an 8 year old

it would be too much for a 38 year old .. but then we have less receptive brains

I would assume as you live in Brussels that much of it she should have picked up by now anyway .. no?

Same as stuffitllama - you are very lucky that your 8 year old is being asked to do something as useful and educational as this

and it's 29 linked pieces of information with a visual stimulus

I really don't think that's such a biggie really .. what's the worst that will happen anyway .. she doesn't get 10 out of 10?

The problem is though that they are just asked to remember names and spellings without doing any work around it so it doesn't really have any meaning attached to it making it difficult to remember. If they been working on the different places in Belgium in class it would be a different matter but they haven't. I guess it would the same as asking an 8 year old in the UK to learn the names and main cities of 10 English counties and place them on a map without actually talking about what happens in those counties/cities. Twiglett, yes, she has lived all her life in Belgium and has visited some (but not all) of the towns but has no idea what provinces they are in.

I tutor maths, English and French myself and know that my students only seem to get things into their long-term memories (rather than cramming information into their short-term memories) if they are applied in some way rather than just asking them to learn by rote.

One of the things they were asked was to give the name of a Flemish town. She had learnt that the top part of Belgium is called Flanders and the bottom part Wallonia but was scuppered by the fact she'd been asked to name a Flemish town rather than a town in Flanders. As far as she's concerned the language spoken is Flemish but as it's not only spoken in Flanders but also in Brussels she didn't put two and two together.

Juuule, not it's not a fun thing. How the school system works here (or at least at her school) is that every day you have one piece of homework and one thing to learn for a test the following day. The average of these daily tests is taken and put in your report at the end of the year. You also have two weeks of exams at Christmas and two weeks of exams in the summer (yes, with official timetables). The weighting of your final mark is over 1/3 for the year's work, 1/3 for the summer exams and under 1/3 for the Christmas exams. Then you are given a percentage. If you get less than 60% you fail the year and have to do the whole year again.

Twiglett, please don't think I'm a pushy mum - I told her that if she didn't get a very high mark it would only make a difference of about 1/4% at the end of the year but she still ended up crying over the fact that she was finding it hard to remember it all.

It sounds like you are unhappy with a major part of the whole school system rather than having to learn about the geography of Belgium.

You need to speak to the school about concerns you have with the whole issue of homework, relevance and testing. This one piece of (pretty useful) work doesn't seem to be your beef.

Pointydog, I can't do much about the system as that's the way it works here. I'm used to the fact that she's tested every day, sometimes in a more meaningful way than others but she can, for the most part, cope with what they are expected to learn. I just found this amount of work for one test out of 10 rather excessive. If they had done work on this during a period of time and then were tested at the end of the year in the summer exams I wouldn't have batted an eyelid.

Never mind, it doesn't matter. The system is so different from the British system from what I can work out that I guess I shouldn't've really posted this question in the first place.

LongtimeinBrussels , it is hard when we have our dc in a school system that we don't know or didn't go through ourselves isn't it. I know I'm always comparing my dc's schooling here in Germany to what I had as a child and it was much much better and I have great memories of my primary school years which I don't think my dc will have.

It's a bit late now but I think I would have tried some visual aids, i.e. print out a blank map and then just mark in the counties, rivers, dots for capitals and write the names on little slips of paper and she practices putting them in the right place, so 1 day just the rivers, next day spell the rivers and then place the towns, then spell rivers, towns, place the counties or whatever. It's a lot of messing about though when she has other homework and things to do - and you too presumably.

I find it dry and a bit much for an 8 year old at one go tbh, however I suspect this gives you an indication of what secondary schooling will be like there.

SSSSandy2, I have two older boys who also went through this system. They also did this Geography thing but I'm sure they were older when they did it as they didn't struggle as much with it. She ended up getting 4/10, with the average being 7.6 (yes, they give the average mark alongside your mark just in case you didn't feel bad enough about the mark you got!). Not that the boys didn't struggle with some of the things asked but more later on in primary and then in secondary.

I did the blank map thing but apparently she got given a list of questions (haven't seen the test yet) rather than being asked to fill in the map like I thought she'd have to do (I'm sure the boys had a mixture of questions and map-filling). She seems a bit upset about her 4/10 but I think I've managed to persuade her it doesn't matter. This wasn't easy though as that's not the attitude of the school. At the end of the year they get given their reports in the order they come in the class. The little girl that came last last year came out of the class in tears. Obviously the children want to avoid that humiliation and would rather be one of the first to get their report rather than have to wait for ages. You are right though that she had other things to do as this was an extra test. She still had her daily test (a spelling test of 22 difficult words like chevreuil et accueillante (difficult vowel combinations)) that day. She was obviously supposed to spend her half-term doing it. I tend to think that half-term should be a holiday from school. She had to read, do all her corrections and catch up on some pages of maths she'd fallen behind with as it was.

admylin, yes it is hard though I think when seen from the UK it is often seen as a good thing. A case of "the grass is always greener" I think. I would like my dd to have more time for outside school activities and to play whereas I think the UK system has gone completely the opposite way where the children are not pushed enough and competition is certainly not encouraged as it is here. Somewhere in the middle would be perfect! They certainly need a little less rigour and discouragement here. It is the same in Germany?

When we were kids, naming countries and capitals was what we did for fun.

ST - we do this in the car too but my dd knows more countries and capitals than she does Belgian provinces and main cities (pretty sure most English children would also know more countries and capitals than counties and main cities in England ). She wouldn't know where to place most of them on a map though, nor how to spell them!

Life before Nintendo DS, Sue!

Actually, for the Playstation generation, one of my DDs' (10 and 8) favourite web games is Traveller IQ (you can access it via Facebook).

There are loads of challenges where you have to place the city/famous place on the map.

I think it's pretty grim that it seems to be up to parents. I asked by Y7 child's geography teacher why in geography they don't teach them where places are. I was told it was up to us.

I don't think it's too much to expect that by the end of Y7 at latest they should be expected by the school to be able to fill in a map of Europe with at least 15 countries and capitals in the right places, plus the other biggies -- Washington, Pretoria, Moscow etc.

Maybe yours is expecting too much longtime, but geography teaching under the NC seems to have gone completely the other way to sociogeography, without the context of borders and so on. I don't know how they expect children to understand geopolitics without a basic knowledge of physical geography. Knowledge comes before understanding and analysis I reckon.

i "asked my" not "was asked by"

Hmmm...I teach Y7 Geography, and we have definitely covered where major places (continents, oceans, countries and capitals) are. It's part of doing atlas work.

That's interesting. I was definitely told this on report day. I don't think mine do any atlas work. I'd love for mine to be tested every half term on filling in blank maps. What should I say to our geog teacher? I don't want to be as critical as I am on here (plainly -- he must be working within restraints himself) but really would love for my ds to have more of it.