Pardon my dimness, but infant teachers, what is..................

[Aero]

........a medial phoneme?

Does it simply mean middle letter, or is a secret code that I have never heard of before, but feel I should have?

Dd has received a sheet of words and been asked to find words with the 'medial phoneme' 'o' or 'e', but there are no words on the sheet with those as middle letters which is why I ask. I assume then that she is meant to think of these words herself.

Also, is it the latest craze to try and teach infants who have not yet mastered their letters properly to try and do 'fancy' joined up writing. Dd is totally confused and frustrated with all this and has been in tears tonight because she finds it too difficult. She's 5.5 and in year one and I feel there is just far too much pressure to learn all this. Also, to learn spellings and be expected to write them down when she still gets her letters mixed up. She can spell the words aloud, but gets them marked wrong when she's clearly just written certain letters back to front! This just upsets her as she knows she spelt the word right iyswim.
Can you tell I'm a frustrated parent?!!

I put this in chat, then realise this might be a better place for it.

errrr, nope. You'd better let me in on it so I can look really clever in front of dd.

Just in defence of the temporal connective teacher......

That will have been one of their learning targets and therefore the teacher would (I am assuming) have told the kids to use temporal connectives and therefore was pointing it out in their work.

Also wanted to add, I have found by giving the kids the vocabulary of what the 'thingys' are makes it much easier to discuss work with them and therefore improve.

For example, I can honestly say to my 9-10 year old: Can you write a complex sentence beginning witht he subordinate clause.
And they can do it. And therefore, understand how to write with a variety of sentence structures making their writing more mature and coherent.
If I hadnt taught them a) what a complex sentence was and b)the effect of moving around subordinate clauses, I couldnt show them how to improve their work in this way as easily.......

I'll get me coat....

(feeling thick because I haven't a clue what most of these words mean and I'm a trained teacher - not teaching at the moment so don't panic!)

Just wanted to say hello Aero, how is ds1 today?

But unless we as parents also know these things, how can we be expected to help them, or are they meant to teach us?

Done up your buttons yet? .......lol

Popyscalindisguise, I agree it is reasonable to use proper terminology with older children, but it seemed a bit much as a communication with a five-year-old. After all, some of them can't read "temporal connective" at that age!

i agree with you all! Yes!

Thats why we do parent meetings to explain....

other connectives:
additional: add ne thing to another for eg also, moreover etc
causal@=: show that one thign caused another : therefore, because
oppositional: oppose things eg however

Hi Cadders. He's got some energy today and has started to eat better which is good. Will be keeping him off tomorrow, but hopefully he'll be well enough to go back to school on Monday. It's been a lonnnnnnnnnnng week.

You able to pop in tomorrow - I got a little something for ya.........

Think I'd fail English language if I were to take it again now then........and I thought I was pretty good at that!

Still seems un-necessary though, and believe me, parents evening will be used to discuss dd's progress, rather than to fill me in on the jargon. I guess they could send home a sheet to explain these things though.

thats what i mean aero

i send a sheet home if dong something with words like that in

do parent help sheets for maths,,,,,

anyway

Well last week in ds1 homework book (yr1) Teacher had written "X did not know what an antonym was, but when it was explained could give an example" I'm all for proper English, but I found it strange to be used like that in yr1, and did she really expect ds1 to know it with out it being explained?

They must have been doing it in class for her to set it as homework though?

temporal connectives? Oh ffs. I make a living out of writing and I have never heard these terms - or needed to. What IS the point? Bah!

Seriously, do they really help children? HOnestly?

Ok.
I want my nine year olds to write more maturally.

They write:
The boy ran round the corner. A monster was chasing him.

How do you get them to:
Because the vicious monster was chasing him, the boy sprinted round the corner.

Because they have the vocabularly with which to discuss their writing, I can say: can you think of a more appropriate synonym for ran? What connetcive could we use to join the sentences? Can we reorder the sentence to delay the event to create tension (etc etc) - just examples btw

Or is that wrong? Not trying to be awkward as I would love some input from actual writers (which I don't claimto be for one moment)

sorry for hijack

Well, I'd probably say, this is great, but how could we make it even more exciting? Can you think of another word for ran? What kind of monster was it? Can you think of some words to describe him? How could we join those sentences up?
I'm not mad on reversing sentences tbh. I think something like, 'the boy sprinted round the corner, closely followed by a giant green monster with sharp claws and hungry eyes' would be more fun! But if you wanted 'because' that would be fine too. 'because right behind him was a giant green monster etc etc'
I personally wouldn't feel the need to use jargon. I used to do quite a bit of teaching as part of my editing role when I worked on magazines. There are always new editorial assistants who want to learn to write and these were 20+ with degrees and I never used any words that were unusual or hard to understand. Just said things like, 'Ok, imagine you are telling someone this story and want them to be really excited by it - how would you say it? What important things would you tell them straight away?" That usually produces good results IME.

popsycalindisguise - maturally?!!!

Sorry (grin)

Glad he is perking up

Should be able to pop in tomorrow, haven't a huge amount to do in town - out of interest, do you know if The photo processing bit of Boots in town is open again? That's the main bit I need so if I find out that it isn't, I might not be in town but could still pop over or you are welcome here (as you know)

Something for me? It isn't head lice is it? We have some of those blighters already!!!! lol I say we, what I mean is dd!

lockets, i'm really sorry if i offended or upset you by suggesting the teacher was showing off. Sorry.

aloha, fairyjay - was just an example off the top of my head

anyway
no need for pisstaking

aloha - we do all those things too
anyway

back to your medial phonemes

bump for aero, not to continue this fascinating siscussion, but because I want her to see about my plans for tomorrow

jargon was developed to make some people feel intellectually superior and make others feel isolated .. we used it at work a lot just because we slipped into it with experience but boy did it make new entrants feel like they had a lot to learn when really they didn't

sad situation that it seems so prevalent in our schools, and yet no-one seems able to spell nor punctuate properly anymore

do you really think that about schools?

I feel it helps

oh well

I think that unless you are in front of the class and understand their abilities it is difficult to judge on an individual basis.

I do know that despite being well educated I would feel intimidated by seeing a child's homework filled with jargon I don't understand .. and I wonder how isolated those parents with lower levels of understanding than I would feel

primary school homework involves the parents .. maybe all homework needs jargon busting sheets

I would far prefer my children to spell and punctuate than be able to understand linguistic terminology particularly at key stage 1 and 2