Having to help less able children in the class, is this normal?

[NotWorkingOut]

DD seems to have been spending a lot of time this year helping other children. When I asked why, she said it was because they couldn't read/didn't understand the questions, so she and a couple of others had to help them do their work. Apparently this was because they'd done the work ages ago, so already knew and had to explain.

The odd occasion I wouldn't mind too much, but is this the sort of thing that's going to happen throughout the school now? She even had to miss play time to do her own work once because she'd been helping someone else!

I have this gut feeling that this is the whole in depth knowledge/mastery of a topic thing!

DD did this a fair amount in Y3, I haven't asked her about this year. IMO the only harm it did was occasionally made her a bit smug/know it all. The teacher explained the idea of it helping her by reinforcing her learning and also made sure it wasn't happening all the time. IMO it's a fairly good thing.

I have never been a fan of 'sitting her next to the naughty child' to police them though and have asked school to move her when she was miserable next to a certain child.

For what it's worth, the research done on the subject suggests that this does help the less able children but has no benefit whatsoever for the child been the helper...

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That's what I'm worried about getin . g1ve I know what you mean about the know it all thing, I'm already getting whinged at that she hates working in pairs cos everyone else refuses to answer questions because she knows best!

We have a teacher who does this. I think it's laziness on her part so that she doesn't have to provide for challenging work for the more able pupil and because she can't be bothered with providing differentiated work for the less able.

Quite a few parents did not want their DCs having her for a second year because of this

My ds had this for YR1 and yr2.(Now yr3)

In yr1, I thought it was unacceptable, because it happened every time, ending up him being really unhappy.

In yr2, it happened once in a while, and the teacher was actually encouraging him to be able to explain to other children, thus deepening his knowledge, which was great exercise for him.

I think if it happens all the time, you should talk to teacher about it, because I don't think it's nothing to do with depth/mastery, it's to do with more convenience for the teacher.

it must really consolidate the helpers learning, and give them useful skills. I think it seems like a good idea if it isnt overused

DD has found it useful and enjoyable. Being able to explain to someone else how to do something is much harder than just doing it.

That's not to say she hasn't also been frustrated at times. I think over all it has been of benefit to her.

I don't think you should jump to any conclusions. It might be lazy teaching, it might be that the teacher thinks your dd will be able to consolidate her own learning by explaining the work to others, or, given what you've said about her objections to pair work, it might be that the teacher is using it as an opportunity for your dd to develop better social skills and a more collaborative working style.

There is actually a lot if research which suggests that understanding is deepened by coaching and teaching but this should be in addition to work which provides an appropriate level of challenge. Also children need to be taught how to do it properly or it is of no benefit to either child.

I am sure DD did some sort of session for 'Lifeguards' or something like that, agree it needs to be used well.

DS2 is in yr1 and helping less able children in maths and literacy every single day. TBH I can't imagine any child less suited to being a helper than DS - he has an ego the size of a small country and when he gets bored he disappears into his own imagination. He confidently tells me that he has to help because he is the clearest in the class. We have an upcoming meeting with the school and this may be raised as an area of concern.

Here you go - from a review of studies on gifted and talented teaching strategies:

Rogers found more recent research on peer-tutored dyads (high ability student paired with lower achieving student for collaborative learning of set tasks) and like-ability cooperative learn- ing (high ability students provided with cooperative learning tasks to complete jointly). Effects for these options were moderately positive for like-ability coop- erative learning (Arneson & Hoff, 1992; Coleman, Gallagher, & Nelson, 1993; Hollingsworth & Harrison, 1995; Kenny, Archambault, & Hallmark, 1995; Neber, Finsterwald, & Urban, 2001), but null for peer-tutored dyads (Brush, 1997; Carter, Jones, & Rira, 2001; Elmore & Zenus, 1994; Hernandez- Garduno, 1997). Neither the gifted nor other member of the dyad made any academic gain, but the lower achieving dyad member did “act more like a student”— probably not enough of a change to consider this a viable strategy for gifted learners!

It's ok in my opinion as an occasional thing, or if daily for a few minutes. A brief 'well you do blah blah' is an easy way to see if they have grasped something. But depending on the difference between them it's often pointless for both. Dds primary school were really good, but the one crap teacher in ks1 did try the extra ta route. Crap for both. Dds idea of helping was to do it for them, and in numeracy especially confuse them further by assuming everyone thought like her. Plus the fact she was there for her education, not to slow down to a one size fits all category. It's laziness if done regularly for more than a few minutes. Unfortunately though I'm willing to believe it's pretty common at some schools.

As for who they sit next to, dd sat next to an outlier from the other end of the bell curve in the classroom. And that did benefit both. Dd was beyond the y6 top ability group and a few teachers when she started y4. A very easy way to feel smug if she'd carried on working alongside them and exceeding them. But sitting with your close friend who really struggles there's no reason to think you're superior. And from the friend side, there was no loss of heart in not managing Dds work, as there would have been sat with the bottom group and not keeping up.

I was put next to a girl with pretty serious learning difficulties (had been moved down two years) and I was a super bright child (not boasting, got a PhD but a host of mental health issues, so not brilliant). But it was crap. I was so good at the work and had no teaching knowledge because I was 8/9 yro, so I would just whiz through how to do things, skipping out steps, assuming knowledge etc etc, so I was totally awful as a partner to this student. The poor girl had no idea what I was doing or going on about, and I would get frustrated because I was too little to have better empathy.

I only realised how this would have felt when, as a teen, I was struggling a bit with maths and my best friend, who was doing further maths, tried to help me. I didn't have a clue what she was trying to teach me and she couldn't grasp why I couldn't just 'get it'.

As a method, I think it only works when there is only a slight variation between abilities/stages of learning. It also works better with slightly older/more mature kids and even then must be managed by a teacher to prevent ignorant, accidental bullying effects (I wasn't trying to bully the girl, just thoughtless and frustrated, but with the consequence that I am sure she was miserable and frustrated).

Difference is nags when my dd was in that scenario for most of ks2, they just sat alongside each other doing their own work individually. If dd helped her at all it was more in the sense of a quick response to confirm something so her friend could carry on, rather than waiting for the teacher to come and say 'yes that's right carry on'. It was made clear explanations were not to come from dd.

When I was in school I had a helper who was a class mate and best friend - she was G&T I was very bright but with severe dyslexia. The effect was great for me as with a reader I could perform in the top set, unfortunately it also meant I was never diagnosed as no one ever worked out that I couldn't actually read.

I think it takes a very talented and experienced teacher to be able to challenge kids that need it and support the kids that take time. A teacher once told me that in one primary school class the difference in abilities between the kids spans 3 years (IYKWIM). My twins are clever (not gifted), but because they are very small, emotionally and socially immature we took the opportunity to put them in a class where they could do 1 class in 2 years. We explained to the teacher that they could do all 1 class maths and were already good readers and would need to be given more difficult work. Unfortunately the class caters mostly for kids that need more time to get to grips with school work (I was shocked on the first day that my boys were in a class with kids that couldn't recognise their own name) and even more unfortunately the teacher set the pace at that of the slowest child in the class and extra work for my boys was just more of the same. In 2 years they learnt next to nothing in maths or reading. They are now back in a normal class 2 with a fantastic teacher who has recognised they need more, they have jumped over class 2 maths and have started on class 3 maths.
What is the answer? Unless your kids need to develop the social skills I would object to them being teacher's helper and insist that they are able to move forward more quickly, get extra work. Can she move up a class? Nearly 40 years (ha ha!) ago I got an assisted place at a private girls school - I would definitely recommend that for very clever kids. I'm not in the UK so don't know if such scholarships exist anymore. The only good point is that being teacher's helper means that the teacher recognises that the child is talented, my nephew flunked school completely because his teachers didn't realise he was clever - at 21 he is now a member of MENSA.

I think it is a good way of checking if they really do understand something if they can explain it, but there really does need to be a limit to how often it's done. I'm feeling very reassured though after having a chat and her telling me that a small group of them had been working with another teacher on something that was really hard. It's the first time I've ever heard her say that something in school is hard! So it does look like they're also stretching her.

Bless her, she did say to me yesterday she wished they could just have individual desks in the classroom cos she was fed up of people trying to copy her!

DD was in a school where they admitted she learnt nothing while there. She was set with extension homework in Y1 and Y2 and learnt nothing during the day. She helped those less able and after a lot of angst we moved her to another school. Although helping others in class may be good for the soul, social development etc, it isn't ultimately why my DD is as school. Why should she be held back and feel crestfallen at going over the same thing time and time again? Yes we get told that it will benefit the less able and she did that, in spades, but how is it fair to deny her getting on?

My DD2's like that, she's not a studious type like DD1 despite having more natural ability. If anything she actually went backwards last year, which isn't exactly ideal. Her progress has been covered up since she started nursery though with records of achievement going missing and other such things. But it's all ok because she got all exceeding at the end of yrR. Not bitter at all, oh no.

Ds2 has encountered it several times, most recently in year 5. I didn't know it was going on until I was grappling to understand how well he was doing in English at parents night. The teacher wasn't saying and the accompanying report just put him at a level but without a sublevel.

So, I asked which set he was in and the teacher suddenly got quite animated. She didn't like sets she said. She didn't like measuring progress. The children worked in pairs in English in her class, she told me. So, I asked who DS was paired with and she wouldn't answer.

Her defensiveness in the face of my naive question was illuminating. Even she could see that DS was not being helped by the system she was using, and she was the definitive straight out of college, with very left leaning politics NQT (she taught the children her views).

At the end of the year, the report showed that DS had made almost no progress in English. Then the (excellent) year 6 teacher, took the class in hand and taught all of them extremely well, covering two or three years of progress in one year.

People who believe in this system say that you don't truly know something until you can explain it to someone else.

However, what they overlook is that there is a difference between being capable of explaining something and spending time doing it.

I don't think the system helps the less able children either and it gives them a tutor who may not have any empathy with what it is to struggle and may not realise that they need to explain concepts slowly, checking each step before progressing. One of the boys in Ds2's year 6 class last year, asked him to tutor him for maths last year. Ds2 happily agreed but what Ds2 thinks is obvious, isn't always obvious to other people. I don't think it went well because the boy's mother hired a private tutor soon afterwards.

what Ds2 thinks is obvious, isn't always obvious to other people

I am not the greatest mathematician ever, but was fairly good at age 16. I have a vivid memory of trying to help a friend of mine with maths, and her saying 'But why is that?' about a concept and my having no other explanation than 'Because it is!!!' Which is one of the many reasons I don't like the system.