To think my son should not be asked to write F*ing poetry in year 1 for homework

[Reallytired]

I feel its too soon. My son cannot spell and I would prefer it if he was given spellings for home work.

Frankly I think he should concentrate on basic literacy skills and hand writing.

I disagree Dinny. You can't slow down a child who has lots of ability and memory is an important part of learning to read.
IME they use good memory skills to learn phonics rapidly too- hence the ability to decipher new words

wow, enjoy, Twiglett - am stuck here at work/

Is the main worry that the teacher won't appreciate his effort? ITC I would take her aside and have a word with her

hmmm, my ds (3) "reads" books but had assumed he was just memorizing them.

in fact, he finds it easier than dd (5) in many ways.

maybe we see poetry as the "hard" stuff we had to learn by rote at school. nowadays it is more fun - dd1 had some comprehension to do this week about a poem in the shape - and about - a christmas tree.

Hope it's lovely Twig.

It is a bit Pollyanna though. It is not going to happen with many, many children. And it's not fair on the not bright, struggling children who don't have parents who can help them.

It is just something else for them to fail at.

she never kind of read along the words, she just enjoyed listening. much more reluctant to read than ds

I think it's wonderful to read early and to move on to harder books if the child is happy to. Mrs R your dd will probably be a voracious reader as she gets older. But too often at schools they prevent the children reading books that are on a "too high" level for them, because it interferes with curriculum planning. That is, you can't read Y3 books until you're in Y3. Hope it doesn't happen with you!

stuffit- That was one of my fears when she started school but they have continually assessed her and her reading books atm are the perfect stage for her.
That must be extremely frustrating, stuffit, and something I will def. keep an eye on.

TBH dinny, they all get there in the end, don't they? I think the main thing is a love of books, which if she loves listening to them , you are instilling already

stuffit- I get the impression you have a few reswervations about the school in general?

No Mrs R it's the National Curriculum and National Testing I don't like. It underestimates children and aspires to mediocrity (er IMHO of course). They're all so bright, and so keen, and so able to absorb, and I think the NC lets them
down.

"Write most letters, correctly formed and orientated, using a comfortable and efficient pencil grip
Write with spaces between words accurately "

Quoting bits of the national curriculum is not helpful Muppetgirl. Lots of year 1 children have problems with writing, particularly summer born boys. These boys are developmentally normal, its the national curriculum which is the problem.

Countries like Finland do not make five year old boys write poetry. Instead the children enjoy creative play and being read a wide range of material. I am sure that Finish children have a positive introduction to poetry. Yet Finland does better in literacy than the UK.

Someone who says that a child that they have never met must be able to do X,Y, and Z because the governant says so is being a complete muppet. Don't you agree?

RT

Summer born boys are the ones who suffer. The difference between a boy just five and a girl nearly six is significant. These differences, which do not signify a difference in intelligence or how well they will do in the future, are highlighted by tasks like the one your son is being asked to perform, and they can reinforce a completely unnecessary sense of failure.

There have been many, many reports pointing up how the national curriculum benefits girls more than boys, and this is one of the reasons boys aren't doing so well. I didn't take this up earlier as it's another huge area. Just wait. Maths is all shopping and cooking, and geometrical shapes are never skateboard ramps or sports pitches, and the importance given to colouring in (even at secondary school) is amazing.
My son has had fully accurate neat French homework sent back unmarked because its illustrations were not coloured in. You couldn't make it up.

Haiku. To convey
one's mood in
seventeen
syllables is very
diffic...
(John Cooper Clarke)

Just thought I'd add a bit of culture to the discussion!
BTW my year 1 DS loves writing poems. His teacher says she's not bothered about the spelling, they'll work on that. It's the rhythm and sentence construction she's looking at.

and encouraging creativity!

colouring is dull in my opinion too kerrymum...
my dad always thought that tracing was a very bad thing ( he is an artist)

Can you point me to a couple of reports showing that the curriculum is biased towards girls, llama?

See this link. Boys do less well than girls in every subject at every educational level.

www.firstandbest.co.uk/T1278%20%20the%20Underachievement%20of%20Boys.pdf

In the past girls used to unachieve. Prehaps the curriculum has swung from favouring boys to favouring girls.

I think that colouring is a good thing to practice in infants. It makes the hands stronger and improves fine motor control, but it shouldn't be made the most important thing at school.

It has been mistake getting rid of things like stressful three hour exams and having lots of course work.

yes, the fine motor control required with colouring in is a good idea - ds just draws all the time which has strengthened his hands remarkably

Right you lot.

Remember Les Dawson? Remember how on every show he used to sit down in tails at a grand piano and play an absolute car crash of a Beethoven sonata or some other classical piece? It was fun and it was creative and it was inventive.

He could not have done it unless he was a very good piano player and had mastered the basics of musicianship.

Do you understand my (fabulous) analogy.

I've yet to read a cogent argument on this thread in favour of giving poetry homework to five year olds who cannot read, write and spell properly.

Saying your five year old likes to play word games doesn't really count.

and neither does saying poetry is lovely.