WIBU to speak to teacher?

[Doughlene]

DD6 lost half her break today at school.

She wrote 4 sentences, the teacher said the hand writing was too small and rubbed them out and asked her to do them again.

She then wrote them bigger, the teacher came back over and rubbed them out stating the handwriting was now too big.

She was then not allowed to break until she had written then sentences at an acceptable size.

Now the students I work with are secondary, so I don’t know the specifics of how they handle these sorts of things, but this seems really odd to me?
Rubbing out the sentences to start with seems ott, I would have simply drawn a line and asked her to copy them out again but slightly bigger… rubbing them out again because they were now too big just seems a bit ridiculous. She had what would be considered a negative consequence where I work, but not for negative behaviour… I’m very happy to be told that it’s normal but to me it’s seems very harsh, she also missed her break time snack which is incredibly frustrating as she’s currently under paediatric care due to struggling to maintain her weight!

Would you ask the teacher for some clarification of the situation, or simply leave it?

Background info as to not drip feed: new teacher, previous teacher left at the end of last term. She’s been off for over a week as she was really poorly so first day back so she was quite tired which might have played a part. Never had any mention of her handwriting before, previous teacher often commented on how her handwriting was coming along.

I'd mention it, it does seem OTT for a 6 yo to lose break due to their writing being the wrong size. I don't think there should be any consequences for that unless the child was deliberately trying to wind up the teacher, which is probably unlikely at that age.
I'd also mention the issue with weight and how important it is that she does not miss out on any food.

If your daughter was 15 I’d say no. But she’s 6 and unwell and lost time to eat food so I can’t see why you wouldn’t speak to the teacher to be honest. Teacher is unlikely to have a good overview of her back story and your DD is too young to explain it so I’d absolutely speak up for my child if I were you.

Absolutely YANBU, she’s 6. Their breaks are everything at the age. It was cruel of the teacher to make her keep working just because he/she wasn’t happy with her handwriting.

Thank you both! I just wanted to double check I wasn’t being precious or looking at it from a secondary standpoint and totally missing the point.
Frustratingly I know she’s aware about DDs issues with food and weight as I spoke to her about it myself, the school have been very helpful in organising different food for her in hopes of encouraging her to eat better, and also keeping a diary of what she eats at school!

Yeah. I’d ask to speak to the teacher too. That seems excessive. I don’t care if there was negative reasons for what she was doing, although there really wasn’t by above story. You still don’t lose break or lunch times. Children need those times to regulate and snack and play. That’s also important.

Sounds ridiculous to me. If she/he wanted the writing to be a certain size, then she/he should have left both attempts, big and small, and told your DD to aim for a size in between the two, OR, demonstrated the size she/he wanted. If she/he did that, then it was not unreasonable to ask your DD to do it again, but she absolutely shouldn't have missed her break time.

We're nearly at the end of the academic year, so presumably the teacher knows your DD and her handwriting very well by now. If this was a regular thing, yes it would be worth raising, but as a one-off towards the end of the year I would find it more likely your DD did that ridiculous teeny tiny barely readable writing then second time massive over-the-top writing which is cheeky/mischievous and now she knows there's consequences for unacceptable work (within her control).

This is a new teacher, previous teacher left at the end of last term, this teacher started one week after this term started and DD was off for a week poorly, so in total this teacher has known the DD for around 3 weeks.
It absolutely still may be the case that DD did very tiny hand writing, but she definitely does not know DD as well as she would if she’s been the teacher since September

I would approach the teacher but in an inquisitive way rather than all guns blazing just because you don’t know how accurate your DD’s account is (obviously not suggesting she’s lying but my 5 year old DS tells me some confused stories about things that happen at school which turn out to be slightly more nuanced than his narrative suggests 😂)

Absolutely ask though because that seems harsh if it did happen exactly like that and totally unacceptable to deny a snack to an underweight child!

Just a small update.
It turns out my DD was not embellishing and the teacher was firmly supportive of rubbing out her work and keeping her in at break.
I explained my point of view, then explained it again more firmly when she decided to talk over me consistently.
It ended with the teacher begrudgingly offering to be more supportive in the future but I’m not particularly holding out much hope, only time will tell!

To be honest this sounds pretty normal. If the new teacher has seen your daughter's previous work and believes it to be better than what she produced yesterday then yes she will ask the child to do it again. Also we are in the final term of the school year. If you are in England, then the teacher will be thinking ahead of making sure they are meeting the standards for the current year (year 1 I am guessing) and ready for year 2. Maybe the previous teacher left as they were under pressure to bring the children up to meeting expectations, maybe the new teacher is also now under stress realising that maybe the class are behind.
Have you taken much notice of your child's writing to consider whether they are being inconsistent? Sometimes children will rush, hence the large writing or they will write really small making it tricky to read (and therefore it will need to be written again else no one can check it and it also may be a sign they are covering up they cannot form letters correctly).
You have asked the teacher to be more supportive in school, but maybe you could ask what you could be doing at home to help support your child with their handwriting?

As someone who’s taught many KS1 classes, this does look a bit odd. Rubbing out four sentences twice would make quite a mess of your child’s writing book. Primary teachers usually discourage rubbing out on the grounds that it is messy so it is strange that this teacher is such an enthusiast for it. I’d never rub a child’s work out but I might get them to write it again underneath, which would show any progression.

I'm a teacher of a similar age group and I think this is a bit harsh of the teacher.
I've crossed out work before when I've known they could do better. I've also said "you need to finish that at break, usually for 5 minutes as I like my break. But it sounds like they've gone in quite harsh with a child they don't know that well.

We do lots together at home, DD absolutely loves writing stories so she has a book we picked out at Waterstones that gives you a plot point and sentence starters and then she writes a story, and we’ve been working through it, though not absolutely every day. Of course her hand writing isn’t 100% consistent given that she’s 6 years old but it’s never been hard to read or particularly big or small, and if I look through it I can see the improvement from when we first started.
We had parents evening very recently, and there was no mention of DD being behind, they just gave her the monthly award for her progress (for the first time too).
I was completely open to the teacher suggesting that there is issues with DD handwriting, as I see this daily with my secondary students, but there wasn’t any mention of this at all, simply that it was written too small this time, and then the teacher felt like it was written too big the second time. I asked if it was possible that they could simply draw a line under it if it happens again so DD could use it as a reference for a better size.
Overall I’m still not particularly happy with the way it was handled but hopefully moving forward it won’t happen again, though I am completely immovable regarding missing the snack at break time with her current weight issues.
I also spoke with DD when we got home about trying to continue with the hand writing size that she usually does and not making it too small, or too large, and asked her if there were any specific issues that I could help with but she just said that she was tired and she finds it easier to write smaller than she does at a bigger size, so I think a lot of it was that it was her first day back after over a week off being poorly.

I must admit I did think this, I could see where the work had been rubbed out under the final piece of writing.

Rubbing out a child’s writing is actually against policy on a lot of schools. The reason being that if incorrect work is rubbed out then you can’t see the learning process.
it might be an idea to check out the school policies on the subject Op, also the behaviour policy re what sort of “behaviour” justifies missing break time.
i think this is overly harsh for a six year old child.

I misread what you said and thought your daughter was year 6. I was still going to say it was too harsh for it to have been rubbed out.

Asking for her to re-write it a bit bigger, fair enough.

To me rubbing out what she has done, is equivalent to throwing a piece of work in the bin, do saying it was rubbish. It isn't an action that is going to motivate a 6 year old. Maybe after the second try the teacher should have written the sentence herself, at the size she wanted, for your daughter to copy. If all versions had bern in the book, your daughter could have then looked at them and seen why the one was a better size.

She definitely should have missed having a snack in the circumstances you have explained about.