Is it just me that feels this way?

[Melaniefhappy]

Hi Everyone,

Am I the only one to feel utterly disappointed, if not despairing, about the standard of education at my state primary school (in Hampshire)?

We recently changed schools (moved home) and whilst I totally accept that all schools are different, this new one offers little to inspire the children to do well; for example ..they do no spelling tests, do not ever correct spellings on written work, send home work that is appalling to be 'celebrated' by parents. Dare I go on as I don't wish to bore you ..however... they only read once a week with the children at any age (our old school read everyday - I know, as I went in twice a week with another army of mums to help this happen). Our new school refuses to consider this option despite friendly discussions with the teacher, offers of help, letters and meetings with the head.

Hence I feel I am home schooling first and foremost (in a fun way at home) with school doing the rest- harsh but true. In fact, if my children suceed in their primary education it will be despite the school's involvement, not as a result of it. They are very ready to book fun things - school trips, teachers dressing up for fun reward days, in classroom picnics, and lots of watching videos..but the academics seem to be second place at all times unless you are in the gifted and talented group - you lucky people you!!!

Just before you ask ...other parents in our class range from not really bothered about their children's reading and spelling standards through to worried but have been (like me) totally ground down by the 'no no no' attitude of the school. Despite gentle friendly approaches of concern, nothing happens- and I am the class rep!!! Trouble is, I do not wish to have to quite literally argue/fight with the school and force the issues through Governor levels and on to the Department of Education (or whatever it is called now). Am I a coward?

Yes I am on the PTA, and yes I go in to read, and help as much as I can in the school, and funnily enough there was lots of competition to be a Governor so I didn't take this route - rather wish I had now- might have had a real voice!!!.

Hence I am currently playing the lottery to afford to send my two children to private school - both my husband and I went, and without this, neither one of us would have done so well. Not well enough however to afford the fees today!

Sorry ...rant over!!! I just wondered if I was alone in this or if I am mad, unreasonable and expecting too much.
All the best, really sorry again to moan- it is either this or cry!
Melanie
x

Because they won't necessarily understand why it is wrong!!!!!!!!

May I ask how many children are in your class, Easterbunny?

26

Do you have time to address every single spelling etc. mistake made by your pupils, every day? 26 sets of changing objectives plus the curriculum seems a lot to handle.

What's to understand!?
A spelling is either right or wrong.

A child does not learn how to spell by looking at it, unless they are 'natural' spellers (some children are just really good at spelling). Most children need their daily phonics lessons (grouped according to spelling ability) to learn patterns and rules. When teachers give spelling lists, they usually do it to placate parents. Children rarely retain spellings from their lists. They need to understand the rules, the regularities and the irregularities. They learn tricky words by heart, again and again and again during the phonics lessons.

You don't need 26 objectives for the lesson -for instance, you may find that punctuaion needs addressing, therefore your objective for one day would be 'to use correct punctuation'. You would then mark against your expectation for the particular child i.e. one child may be struggling to use any full stops, another may be moving on to speech marks - you would highlight successes and give an activity to make an improvement (for instance the less able pupil may come and read his writing to the teacher and put in some more full stops; the more able child corrects his use of speech marks.) The teacher will be aware of his/her expectations for each child or group of children.

As for spellings - we will keep the phonics group teacher informed of problems in the children's writing so that they can be addressed.

And yes, each child does have an individual writing target all of their own.

'A child does not learn how to spell by looking at it, unless they are 'natural' spellers'.

I know this is what everyone is currently saying and can see the wisdom behind the thinking when you explain.

BUT that is how we were taught and my parents generation and my grandparents generation. I did learn how to spell via spelling lists etc and traditional methods. It seemed to be successful and I was far from a 'natural' speller.

I think my spelling improved when I began to read widely. Surely you are 'looking' at words when you read and absorb how to spell them in time?

Learning anything by rote is now very much frowned on it seems. Perhaps this is always a good thing? I am not sure.

I'm wondering about this too. As a child in the (supposedly ever so progressive but actually very traditional) Swedish school system of the 70s I did a fair bit of rote learning: hymns, times table, English vocabulary, French irregular verbs, the German prepositions that govern dative and accusative, the rivers of the US etc etc.

I now teach languages to undergraduates who have never had to learn anything by rote ever and who do not believe that the human mind is actually capable of doing this. It slows them down terribly; even googling is far slower than remembering. But I am beginning to feel I am cruel when expecting great big 20-year olds to actually remember a few paradigms.

I think the reason spelling tests don't work is that the children are given their 10 spellings for the week and then allowed to forget about them. When I was at school, the teacher could question us about the previous week's spellings, or last month's. And they were chosen for their phonetic value, to tie in with what we were learning in phonetics: the spellings given to my own dcs often seem completely random (I particularly remember Neighbours, with a capital N- it turned out they had been studying Australia in some other part of the curriculum that week).

fembear,
"What's to understand!?
A spelling is either right or wrong."
classic ,
but I fear that you are at danger of not sufficiently complicating the issue, please spend a week thinking about what you have said and try to get with the program

For the record, we do give out spelling lists related to the phonics pattern and 'tricky' words we are learning at the time.

We also learn times tables by rote.

"A child does not learn how to spell by looking at it, unless they are 'natural' spellers..." According to this statement, the past generations were chock a block full of 'natural spellers'
Methinks that's, ahem, a conspiracy of the Guv'nment - The Great Dumbing Down project, perhaps the most successful undertaking of the said government up to date, period.
[goes to fetch the crystals and pyramid shaped hat]

At my DDs school they are given spelling lists according to a sound and the more able are given some extra challenge words. The spelling 'test' each week is actually sentences using those words as well as words they have learnt previously and words from the list they are expected to know.

This seems excellent to me, I have certainly seen her spelling improve. Surely getting a list like this to learn is the same if not better than learning them in class over and over, doing sentences is helping them with their writing, punctuation etc and it is a gentle start into the more formal homework setup in year 3.

I must admit I get a bit tired of reading on Mumsnet that this doesn't work and that doesn't work when in real life we are hearing about children leaving primary unable to read or write properly. I think it is disgusting that the parents at the OP's school have offered to go in to help with reading etc. It seems like the school just doesn't want parents to see what is happening.

I don't want my childrens education to be restricted by a set of government guidelines with objectives, tick boxes and tests. I want them to enjoy reading and writing because they are able and confident to do it properly.

Rollmops: I don't that you live in the real world. Do you read many forums on the net? I rarely see a post that's spelt correctly from beginning to end (definately, seperately, attatch....).

I find it quite funny when the public-service-worker-bashing newspaper threads start discussing 'standards in literacy', with comments from people who appear never to have attended school.

Eeerrr....... What?

Like... loads of peeple right on forums cant speel or yuse grammer... i dont think their under 10,

Just on the subject of spellings I can't see that the 'Look,say,cover,write,say,check' way that our school insist on can work.

It only seems to test short term memory and I've noticed my dc often ask later how to spell words they've done previously in their spelling homework.

I began testing them more randomly; mixing up the words so that the words and not the list as a whole was being learnt. But no, I got told by the teacher to stop that and stick to the above method because she found it difficult to mark (we don't though, so detention for me no doubt).

I can't believe the rubbish in the first few posts, all that faffy crap about one on one reading and spelling tests being useless.

How can one and one reading not be valuable?

How can learning spellings not be valuable?

Sheer stupidity -- they simply went out of fashion.

OP I completely agree with you and if you can I would home educate. The school sounds appalling.

Actually I don't think people are bashing the public sector in this thread. Why is that any time a parent expresses concern about the school their child goes to it is taken as 'teacher bashing'.

Most parents are just very very concerned about the standard of education their DCs are getting and what is happening in schools. The OP pointed out that her school has refused to let parents go in and help. Now why would that be? All we hear about is super big class sizes and how listening to children read is a waste of their time (although frankly I thought learning to read was the number 1 priority but I guess that's up to the parents eh) yet a school won't let parents help.

The facts are that standards are falling, children are leaving primary unable to read or write properly. Who cares if they know that a carrot is more healthy than a Mars bar, if they can't even read the words it doesn't matter.

And why does every single bloody child have to understand every single bloody thing before they learn it?

They are sponges, sponges at early primary. They'll soak up times tables and spellings, who cares if they understand it, it all falls into place later. Even if they don't understand it later, at least they know it. Then they've got it already and with maths can move on to fractions, algebra etc and with spellings, to more advanced reading.

Some things just need to be LEARNED.

Drives me absolutely nuts.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to read different forums/fora?

God but they know about global warming and eating crisps and how to make a Roman toga.

My tax money is going to be spent on keeping these ill educated people on benefits -- just because when they had the best chance of being taught something useful nobody wanted to upset them by putting a cross by their work. And it pisses me off.

DD is in Year 1 and has never had a spelling test in her life and never reads on a one to one basis to an adult in her school.

Her reading is about 2 years ahead for her age and her spelling is the same.

So what Rainbow? Maybe she's bright, maybe you read to her a lot, maybe both. Unfortunately too many children have badly educated parents who can't do that -- they need the school and the teachers to do it. Should we just forget about them then?

Dc now at junior school and I don't find this an issue, but when at infant school I did wonder that they had the balance skewed more towards the fun stuff rather than the basics.

It was a nice school etc and the dc were happy but dd was struggling a lot with reading at one point and we'd be mining away at home with it whilst they'd be African drumming or fancy dressing during the day in school.

This made me cross because she was only 6 and tbh wasn't up to lots of extra work after school hours.

Thankfully we got there in the end and she's doing v well, but I was concerned for a while. I think the curriciulum tries to cram in so much that everything gets spread a little too thinly.

My last post was a humble suggestion for Easterbunny who seems to visit strange forums indeed.....