dd ain't no genius, but this year 3 work is... extraordinary

[gramercy]

Dd tells me that the teacher says there will be no more 'ability' tables and that everyone will learn together.

Dd said that the whole maths lesson involved writing down a list of numbers ranging from a million and something down to the single digit 7.

In English they had to write just one sentence about their summer holidays.

In her infant school the children were set across the year, and she was doing adjectival clauses by the end of year 2.

How can everyone doing the same thing at the same time be in any way helpful to anyone? I know it was done in the past (I bear witness to such a system!) but the teacher generally aimed the teaching at a higher level and the slower ones festered at the back of the class. Surely with no ability setting only the completely average child is going to be satisfied?

Furthermore (I'm on a roll now!) they had to choose a school library book, and when dd chose a "Humphrey" (hamster series) book her teacher said to put it back as it was too difficult for a year 3 to read.

o dear :(

Oh Gramercy, what a nightmare.

The maths lesson sounds totally pointless, for everyone.

That said, there is some advantage in making sure everyone has the building blocks in maths, because if you have a gap it makes things so much harder. I would not call this exercise a building block.

The library book story is scandalous. How absurd to make an assumption like that! Why on earth did she not open the book and ask your DD to read a few lines out-loud. Then they both would know whether it was appropriate or not.

When I was 6 I moved to a school without ability sets where I was the only child who could read. I still remember the teacher on the first day calling us all up one by one to read to her quietly from the first Janet and John book. I looked at it and told her I had read that one ages ago. she looked a bit sceptical and invited me to show her anyway.

After that, she gave me a book to read in the back of the class whilst she taught the rest of them. At the end of each lesson she would call me up, asked me what I had read, and then send me back with the instruction to read the next few chapters.

This went on for the best part of the first term when I complained to my mother about how boring it was just to sit and read all day.
That was when she moved me.

I would speak to the teacher about your concerns. If your DD is bored she will get disruptive. At least that way you can find out whether she is following school policy, and frustrated herself, doing her own thing but has a clear explanation for her lesson plans, or completely out of her depth.

I suppose it's early days, but the school has a new head and I'm concerned that a new broom has decided to sweep away some of the old systems - such as setting.

But really... having to write the number 7. Sigh.

Mixed ability tables can work for everyone if it's done correctly. Not setting doesn't mean that everyone will be doing identical work or that outcomes will be the same for every child.

I really can't believe that a teacher would ask a class to write numbers from a million and something down to 7 simply because the task would take days to complete ... sorry
Asking the children to write just one sentence about their summer holiday makes more sense than teaching adjectival clauses in isolation - hopefully your DD managed to demonstrate how to use an adjectival clause in her sentence...
I asked my Y2 class to write me one sentence as an opener to a retelling of The Tempest but I was looking for something inspired not just once upon a time as an indication of what the children are capable of.

My DS was asked to complete a worksheet on his first day of year 5, partly for the teacher to assess their abilities and partly to find out a bit more about them.

The sheet was full of questions like "Who is in your family?"

The last question was "Is there anything you would like to know about your teacher?" Every single child in the class answered that question with the sentence "I would like to know my teacher's first name" except DS, who completed the stem with "I would like to know when my teacher isn't looking"

Guess she found out what she needed to know though.

Mixed ability teaching can be lovely and teachers are trained to differentiate, just in more subtle ways than sitting them on different tables. If your dd's teacher genuinely isn't very good that's one thing, but that's not really anything to do with the grouping policy.

I teach secondary English and believe me, I'd rather they came to me in Year 7 able to write a good sentence than able to tell me what an adjectival clause is.

If your dd had been on the 'bottom' table up until now and thought of herself as a 'bottom table' child because of it would you still feel like this about mixed ability teaching?

I'm sorry if I sound antagonistic, and I don't like the sound of the library book thing either, but setting can be really damaging in my opinion and, well, sorry, but the teacher is the educational expert here!

Keep an eye on things. Your dd should be happy and stimulated at school but at the same time it will not help her to pick up that you are being critical of her teacher.