To find some Primary School teaching a bit pointless?

[Schooll]

Every other day my child brings home homework asking her to identify a new type of pronoun, adjective etc.

My friend is over today too and we both work in fields that require a good standard of English. We cannot understand why we are still stressing children out with things like ‘identify the relative pronoun’, what use is this information?

Genuinely, when will my child ever need to know this and why is she spending so much time stressing over the different types when it’s unlikely to ever be needed again, unless she becomes a primary school teacher?

Am I missing something where this sort of information is actually really useful and we should still be using it to judge children’s intelligence in exams etc?

I don’t think anyone on this thread is saying primary schools shouldn’t teach grammar. I think having an excellent grasp of word types is very useful. Knowing how to construct sentences is extremely useful as well, as is punctuating them correctly. It’s how it’s done though that’s the problem.

I don’t see what’s wrong with children using the word connective-this has been replaced with conjunction for no discernible reason. Connective made sense as it connects two parts of a sentence. I don’t see why ‘expanded noun phrase’ is necessary for year 2-what’s wrong with ‘adding description to your writing with adjectives’. I don’t see why ‘fronted adverbials of time’ needs to exist. What was wrong with ‘time’ connectives/sentence starters?

Too many pointless things are forced on children when they are too young and then they get muddled up and don’t remember the basics.

Expand noun phrase= write some more adjectives!?!

@coxesorangepippin but grammar and reading are not mutually exclusive. Once I had learned to read, I don’t think I read much during primary school; we tended to read at home (school reading book or local library). As there was nothing on TV I spent a lot of my spare time reading. I was lucky that I had a primary teacher who noticed I was slightly brighter than average and taught me “old school” grammar - otherwise i would have drifted through the progressive free-flow education my primary school randomly dished out without much idea of the basic structure of language. As a result of being given that grammatical “toolkit” I shone among my state-school peers, got heavily into literature and got a place at Oxbridge. I don’t think my peers stood a chance really - even though some were equally as bright as me, the school was focused on creativity and “learning through self-discovery” rather than actually teaching anything.

I would be upset if things went back to that post-70s nonsense.

maybe there is a happier compromise to be had!

It's a load of shit that was brought into effect in 2014 and in my opinion actively kills children's enjoyment of writing.

It is very odd and probably kills all love of reading and writing. As a primary child in the late 60s and early 70s, I do not remember being taught formal grammar at all but did loads of creative writing and read copiously which has resulted in pretty good literacy (I think).

The algebra comment shows how out of touch you are with people who work in different fields.

Algebra is such a basic concept in mathematics. I can’t imagine I can do calculus without knowing algebra. Calculus is the basis of engineering and I couldn’t have completed my degree without that. I also think of many day to day problems with algebra. It’s a very logical way of presenting problems with variables and then solving it.

As an experienced Ks1 teacher I see the impact of rigorous and scaffolded teaching of phonics and reading. Many of our children have little language from home and aren't heard read. Phonics provides children with the greatest chance of learning to read. Yes it's not for everyone but it is for the majority. Children are also fine learning alternative graphemes and pronunciations as well as split vowel digraphs.

i also agree with teaching grammar but not to the depth it is currently done.
It’s like saying ‘we need to teach science’ and then deciding that this means putting quantum physics and molecular chemistry in Year 3.
I’m a TA and I do a lot of support work with children falling behind. Pps have carefully explained what a fronted adverbial is in an effort to explain why learning about them is important, and just how simple it really is. That’s fine, and makes sense, if you can remember what an adverbial is. If you’ve learnt so many terms that you cannot dredge the meaning of adverbial out of your brain, then fronted adverbial means nothing more than ‘here’s something else I can’t do.’ It’s like giving someone a list of obscure mosses using the scientific names, and then being puzzled when they can’t remember it. It makes sense to me, and is logical, so why can’t you remember it? Why can’t we use the common names of common species so at least everyone knows what the key rules are and why it’s important- why does it need to be so technical? (A beautiful mixed metaphor!) What does that achieve?

And then when writing is judged on criteria like ‘how many fronted adverbials did they use’ rather than vocabulary, or did they create atmosphere, it becomes the writing equivalent of painting by numbers.

The problem with the reliance on phonics to the exclusion of all else is that if children don’t get on with phonics they have absolutely nothing else to work with. Because it’s taught as the only strategy, what do you do if phonics doesn’t make sense to you, or you can’t remember it? It’s not that teaching phonics is wrong but other strategies could be given air time - at the moment it’s a one size fits all approach and it doesn’t.

Absolutely-Nick Gibb is very much behind this. If phonics doesn’t work for a small percentage of children-give them MORE phonics.

I agree op and I used to be a primary school teacher.

Now I'm a mum with a child in year 1 and he has to learn 'nonsense words' for a test.

I can hand on heart say I have never needed to calculate the angle of a triangle since gcse maths and am confident I will never need to for the rest of my life. What a waste of time that was!

I haven't said phonics is the only strategy children are taught. It isn't. Rigorous and scaffolded phonics works for the majority of children alongside a clear and progressive reading curriculum.

Exactly this!

It’s all from Gove’s personal opinion. He had way more power than brains unfortunately. You wait until they start learning about such things as fronted adverbials. 😐

The sad thing is it does feel like some kind of obedience training where we force them to spend huge chunks of their time doing something that they and we both know is pointless. If only they could be doing useful things like exercise, history, drama or or maths instead 😭 Maybe even learning how to identify toxic plants and nutritious plants, something our ancestors took for granted as basic knowledge.

All this type of ‘learning’ does is breaks the trust between child and adult which is so important for learning.

And then they wonder why teens are disrespectful…

Ds is in year 9 and said to me last week “you know I don’t think we have used fronted adverbials once since I left primary schools”

My kid is dyslexic and the assessor said she’s basically colour blind when it comes to phonics. It literally doesn’t work for her.

I gave the school her assessment details - their response to chuck her in a support group focusing on fucking phonics.

I get it that they work for two thirds of the class. But the remaining third are just left to rot and struggle because the curriculum literally won’t let them teach in any other way.

Genuinely interested, when would I have used algebra today @Iamnotthe1 ?

Phonics works for approximately 95% in my experience. However, when children get to mid and upper ks2 there should be alternatives offered. Have you come across Dyslexia Gold? It's the programme we use at my school to support children who need a different approach.

Nobody is complaining about that grammar. I don’t even mind the reflexive/possessive pronouns - it is the fronted adverbials, split digraphs etc. No four year old needs to know the term “split digraph”. Magic E if you must.

I taught English as a foreign language for a couple of years, and have learned multiple other languages over the years. That depth of grammatical knowledge just isn’t necessary unless you are a linguistics student.

“Phonics works for approximately 95% in my experience. However, when children get to mid and upper ks2 there should be alternatives offered.”

If you wait until then and the child is struggling then how much further behind are they because you have waited so long to try something different? How much learning time have they already lost? And how much more disheartened have they become? How can they possibly make up the ground? They’ve had four years of going over and over and over the same thing and failing. What’s that done to their self esteem and desire to try? And what else has passed them by because they couldn’t read?

How do you know if they're struggling because phonics isn't working or it's just that they need more practice than many other children?

Teachers don't blindly teach phonics without assessing children who are struggling and need extra support. In my year 2 we are constantly working with children who aren't at ARE and considering what they need. Is it more practice? Is it a coloured overlay? Do we need to try a whole word approach? We work with SENDCos alongside our phonics programme and reading curriculum to try and support every child to read.

I became a teacher when the searchlights model was popular. I think it provides good options for supporting children to read with phonics being the number one strategy children should adopt.

@Sherrystrull yeah we’re using DG but not because the school new anything about it. Someone on MN mentioned it and I bought the parent subscription so I’m doing it with her in the evenings.

quite frankly the support from the school has been atrocious. Last year she had several interventions and support groups, this year they have no budget, some of the TAs left so there are currently no interventions at all other than the work I’m doing with her in the evenings.

That's awful. We have a dyslexia tutor working closely with children in our school. Does the school provide a coloured overlay or coloured text books?

I think it is probably helpful in learning other languages.