year 7, what do they do? rant!!!!

[Starmummy]

Ds has had two lots of homework this week.
Neither is art, so why I ask myself is he required to draw for both history and English. wtf????? I am surprised that he isnt drawing in maths, at least I could see the point with graphs etc.
The history homework is a pictorial representation of hevan and hell in the Middle Ages. Great, I can see the point but I dont want Ds to be marked for his drawing but it isnt a subject he is very good at or enjoys. English, they are reading a novel Skelly (?) and they have to draw a garge and label items in it. Again I see the point, but crikey my ds is a boy and needs practice at hand writing, essay construction etc. Since he has been in year 7 he has yet to in any subject write more than one page. grrrr.
Is it just this school or is the national curriculum????
Late call!!! They are drawing in maths!!! They have to draw a "brick" pyramid and fill it with numbers - something to do with algebra. I think I get the gist of it (although I havent explained it very well) but I am still really miffed about the other stuff.

My DS must have designed posters for just about every subject he studied in Year 7. That's all he ever seemed to do. He's in Year 9 now and doesn't get quite as much drawing to do - which is good news as he's really rubbish at art!

TBH I think that at this stage in the year it is good that he is doing so much "light" work. It won't be a million miles from Y6 this way and is preparing them and getting them used to their setting/teachers/bigger school etc without the added stress of a whole new style of learning (ie more writing stuff and less "practical" learning).

I don't think they will be marked on the actual drawing standards (as they would if it were art homework) but more on the things they include, IYSWIM.

My dd has done plenty of writing in yr 7 so far. Even drama, where she has had to write 2 short plays!

My DS yr 7 has done a mixture. He has written his first essay on the Romans in History, although he did come home excited tonight because he has to design a playing card with facts about Richard II on it. Seems to have sparked his interest.
He does all his homework on the pc, even the drawing ones. He is much better at IT and design than drawing.

All his maths have been straight forward worksheets.

My year 7 are punch-drunk from essays so are looking forward to creating (and drawing) a Shakespeare board game - utilising their library research of course!

In an ideal world, depts would be cross referencing what they do to stop replication of similar tasks - possible in a primary school but tricky in a multi-dept secondary.

Teachers set it to vary the teaching style, (as not one method fits all), it may be for display and, I hate to say it, but the reality is a drawing is often quicker to mark, especially if year 11 are doing mocks and producing 8 essays each!

But that doesn't help your art burdened child. Hopefully, some writing and reading coming their way!

Making posters is actually a very good way at assessing how much a child knows about a topic and their level of understanding. It's really important to vary the types of work so that you can address the different learning styles of the children in the class.

Displaying children's work is important on various levels.

If I set work to do a poster, I don't mark the child's artistic capabilities, although I will mark for effort. What I am looking for are scientific elements, and particularly what they have written in the labels.

A picture's worth a thousand words...

Cat, I do very little written work in class - most of what they write, they do at home.

Totally agree with Scienceteacher. I like to do poster work as a summative activity that allows me to 'unpick' any lingering misunderstandings that the kids have. And like ST I mark on science content, not artistic ability.

By taking thing from one medium, say written, and converting into into another, you do stretch their understanding.

FWIW my year 7s have a crossword based on the key words that we used in todays lesson.

I lecture in a university and we use posters here to assess work too - it's not really about artistic expression, it's about being able to demonstrate and communicate succinctly that you have understood the work. I'm sure the same is true at yr 7, even if that hasn't been communicated effectively to you/your son

Ahha. I see the point of varying mediums of communication, a very good idea imho. Additionally, I see the teachers point about it beinguseful to check understanding, it just seems that Ds maybe doesnt understand this. He was insitent that it had to hand drawn, because he also is much better at IT, so that would have been easier. It just the drawing gets him so worked up that the content is then negligble.

I shall investigate further a parents evening next week, to check the clarity of the instruction and where, if any the breakdown is in understanding. Thanks v much.
I'd still like him to write a bit more though, even he says they did much more in year 6!

Frankly that would be my gauge of any school. Disregard what the school states they do. Disregard what Ofsted says the school does.

Ask a child at the school these two simple questions:

1. How many supply teachers have you had this week?

2. How many lessons required you to draw/ colour in (other than art) this week?

If the answer to either is more than 1 lesson in 5 (or more than 3-4 a week), run for the hills! Your child will lose up to a year of schooling before yr 11 compared to a school not allowing this to happen.

Just one of the many subtle ways in which our children's education is being undermined undetectably. I think it stinks. It should not happen, but it does.

Oh and to all the people arguing for kinetic learning, you are of course right. However, you can bet your bottom that there is a lot more kinetic than learning going on in most schools. Many appear to expect an 11 yr old to evolve at an emotional/ developmental that I would consider normal for a 6-7 yr old level. Not acceptable by my book.

That's a bit simplistic, Duchesse.

There are many good and positive reasons for having supply teachers - for example, there might be several staff out taking children on a trip. Supply teachers who are regularly in the school are often much better than regular staff covering in their frees. Supply teachers do try to teach the lesson, whereas regular teachers need the time for their own marking, and so the children have to work quietly from textbooks or worksheets for the whole lesson.

Drawing is a useful tool, and many lessons benefit from diagrams (we do lots of diagrams in Science - it's a natural part of the subject - and other subjects are drawing intensive, eg Mathematics, Geography). I can imagine that in French if you were learning parts of the body, or rooms in a house, the obvious thing to do would be to draw a picture.

Looking at it from the school's poiot of view, yes, it may seem simplistic.

Looking at it from the point of view of the newly arrived 11 yr old, fired up with enthusiasm about starting "big school" and expanding their knowledge (which they mostly are at the start), having at least one lesson a day covered by supply/ out of subject colleague/ colouring lesson and you start to get a very different picture.

Why should those 11 yr olds suffer because the Geography GCSEs need to go on a field trip, or someone needs to take time off to mark coursework (let alone illness)? Why should they lose simply days in low-challenge, routine and dull repetitive lessons with no new teaching content? They are learning machines at that age. Why routinely waste their time? No wonder they end up switched off by the middle of yr 8. It's not just teenage striking them, it's Boredom with a capital B, and low expectations of their school experience. And who can blame them, when they had up to a fifth of their lessons replaced by baby-sitting throughout their first year of sec school?

And the obvious thing to do in French lessons is to learn new vocabulary and grammar in every lesson to empower then to keep up their interest and develop their skills, not to patronise them by getting them to to draw pics routinely. Drawing where it occurs should (and does in my lessons) underpin new language learned that day, not merely be a babysitting exercise for an entire lesson as so often happens.

I teach Skellig to Year 7, I think the drawing and labelling of the garage exercise is to draw attention to the use of adjectives and adverbs. I usually do something similar as a starter, the class then do their own descriptions of a builing or room trying to use the same descriptive techniques. Drawing really helps some students plan their writing. I sometimes give them a choice of planning methods, some choose to draw, others do bullet point etc. Hope that's helpful!

Is there a new subject on the curriculum? What is skellig?

It's a children's book

I taught Skellig last term and just before Christmas, my class designed a film poster based on the book. We examined various film posters and talked about how they were structured and why, looked at the use of a tagline, then they drew their poster on A4, stuck it on to A3 and annotated each element of their poster with an explanation of the thinking behind the decision they had made. I don't see why English should be regarded in the reductive way it seems to be by some on this thread, where nothing but essay writing is of any value. Of course my students get practice in spelling, punctuation, how to structure an essay, how to analyse poetry, prose and drama but I fail to see why art and media do not have their place in my subject too. Next half-term I am exploring print advertising with them and as part of that - shock, horror! - they get to design and annotate their own advert as a way of exploring persuasive and emotive language. But I am aware that they might enjoy that too much and should perhaps write a few more essays instead...

DD has also been given a lot of homework that has been artistic / creative and I agree with other MNers that this makes for a more interesting assignment. For instance DD was far more enthusiastic about soaking paper in tea and coffee to make parchment and writing an article for a Roman newspaper about Caesars death than she would have been had she just had to write an essay about it. Thankfully the school she attends is a very good school and so I'll put my faith in them and their teaching methods until I have reason not to.

Really though it's because teachers are pressured to set homework each week when actually children would be better off practising handwriting, playing numeracy games with their parents or reading.

I hate 'formal' homework. Homework for the sake of homework. Will be campaigning against when I become Parent Governor when dd is at school!

I love the ideas of film posters and parchment etc. I think the school Ds attends is possibly usinbg it as a cop out or not clearly explaing to Ds what can be done, as in the skellig example above. At no point did he use the words adverbs or adjectivies. I will check next week at parents evening next week (yes I know I said it was last week but we had one day lock down as GB visited for the day - national holiday declared and then two!!!!!!! days off because it rained -wtf???). Anyway back to the point parents evening next week. Will check if it is teacher or DS interpretation.

Umlellala - I am not wanting formal homework just for the sake of it, I just think he doesnt read or write to the standard required for year 7, so some "regular" work would be good.

Thanks

Do you ever consult the children?
[rant on]My kids LOATHE art & DT because they are no good at them. It's bad enough that they have to do it in Art / DT lessons - why do you have to introduce it into other subjects too!! Do you make them do cross-country running in English? Do you make them compose a tune in History? Of course not - it's ridiculous. So why do you make them do so much art in non-art lessons?[/rant off]

It's a load of tosh about kinetic learning or whatever. The first thing you learn about making posters is that they have to be readable from a distance i.e. there have to be a small number of points made using very large letters i.e. you skim the surface of a subject and don't go into depth aka dumbing down.

And I get cross when DS does yet another poster on the computer. I insist that he takes it to school and prints it out using their cartridges.