to say to my kid" if you can't do your homework then take it back in UNDONE"

[AugustusGloop]

rather than me trying to explain it?
Because that is what I ( very rarely) do.

Primary.

Purepurple. I agree up to a point but to have 30 children question the rules would lead to discipline problems. I would rather my child went to a school where kids just got on with education and conform just with the little things that are not a big deal e.g socks. She/he can wear funky socks at home! When it comes to rules that inhibit love of learning then I will discuss this with the school. I'm also going to give up some of my time to help with reading in school . I'm going to put my money where my mouth is.

I would prefer pupils to express themselves in their work rather than their socks.

Nooka I do agree with you that children with SEN such as dyslexia do require a different approach, however, in the schools near me they teach phonics routinely and as my own dcs are not school age (just mindees) and I thought that was the change in cirriculum across the country. In our local school all children have a comments book for homework so there is a good communication between school and home. i.e. if children are struggling or finding work too easy then parents can say so. I would go into school rather than not do homework and discuss problems well before it got to tears and frustration. I do with mindees at parents request.

ds is nine, so started before the phonic approach came in. I certainly hope he wouldn't have the same problems now, although I suspect he would still have needed special help, and he would still not have got it (help is often only given after the issue causes the child to fall behind the average). Given that the school knew he had problems and still set him spellings etc I'm not sure they would have been very interested tbh. dh had a big argument with them about homework - he said that we as parents should be punished, not ds if it wasn't handed in. School came out with their usual blurb about discipline and preparing for work (not sure why a six year old needed to prepare for work tbh). Interestingly in the States they didn't do spellings at all, and were much more focused on teaching strategies to decode and build words. In Canada ds's current teacher does spelling patterns, which seems much more useful (ie a whole set of words with sound patterns, like au and aw; or a set with silent letters, like knife and thumb). ds can get the hang of these, and I think it is actually useful. In the UK the words would not be ones that ds was likely to use, and there seemed no rhyme or reason to them.

I have to admit I routinely cheated in spelling tests!

nooka, I feel for your ds. I do think that there are issues in the way in which reading is taught to primary age children in UK. Even where phonics is used, it is used concurrently with whole word recognition and spelling and reading are done concurrently. None of that building block approach, rather a messy holistic dance-before-you-can-walk approach where children are expected to pick it up half by structured teaching and half by osmosis.

No wonder a child with dyslexia will find it confusing. Heck I do scratching my head and trying to figure out how to explain it all to dd! I too am making her work through a phonics programme ahead of and outside of school.

Thanks blueshoes, he's fine now, and having plenty of dyslexic uncles and cousins to look up to certainly helped. I was fascinated by the phonics tutor's approach. It's not how I thought about reading at all (probably why I struggled to teach ds). I am a very fast speed reader, and always have been, but I can't spell for toffee, am disorganised and have no sense of direction (all things associated with dyslexia, which I very much doubt I have). There is so very much we don't know about the way that our brains work that I think it pays to have an open mind.