Light hearted thread; who has been grilling their DC about which groups they are in?

[newtermnewname]

Be honest Mine have volunteered some information but I am resisting asking any more.

Stand up and be counted.

Still going over tables 2, 5, 10 and number bonds etc to 20 in year 2 here as well. Normal I thought.

I don't have to ask. I get constant updates from DS1 and his friends about who is in what group, and the exact positioning within each of their groups. It varies day by day, and depends on how many maths questions they got right/whose work the teacher read out in literacy etc.

The teacher, of course, has no idea they are doing this. We don't get given NC scores and had a very vague report on Year 2 SATS scores, which is great imo. The children have, however, taken matters into their own hands.

Mind you, they actually don't mind where they are placing themselves. It is more a case of "so and so is definately top of maths this week, and I'm currently 4th. Look out for next week's update".

Oh, they also rank the teachers, and the first week was spent discussing which children the teacher liked best.

SE13 - I think you know all you need to know about your daughter, as well as all about what she should be able to do - and I bet she is doing fine, otherwise I am sure you would worry too.

As for me, I am still unsure about whether or not it is normal to be still practicing counting in 2s, 5s, adding 10 and calculating within 20 in Y2. If they are doing timestables now and calculating with numbers up to 50 then I thought it would be important to be able to do the former well?

gabid - they will want to ensure that everyone gets the x tables and calculating within 20 rock solid before moving on to larger numbers/more x tables.

Funny thread! I am happy with my own child's progress, however, I read this post earlier in the week and it set me wondering about the lay out of my own Dd's room.
One evening she completed her howork and I asked her who she was sitting with and if there different numeracy/literacy groups.."Oh, yes, !" she replied. "I will draw them for you!!!! "She produced a lovely "plan" of the seating arrangement with code names for all the tables. She herself is in Y3 and not fully aware of all the differenciated learning that goes on...I do not discuss it but she had a very interesting plan with arrows and names!

I make it a point to find out which group DD1 is in. I had to be sneaky until a couple of years ago, but since then it's been on the classroom wall (the Sunflower chart thing with the Could, Should and Must groups) so it's saved me some effort.

I usually nonchalantly ask DD if she's in the same group as Amy Chua* and when I know she is that's all I need to ask .

*Name changed obviously

DD2 has only just started Reception and she has been grouped with the other Autumn borns. Perhaps that's how they start out?

Now, you have to guess the maths group:
Circles
Triangles
Squares
Pentagons
Hexagons...

anyone?

aries12 There's nothing wrong with their memories, is there?! DD can tell me the groups for all subjects, plus exactly who is in which group for cello on a Friday (hasn't a clue how long the cello lessons are though).

Yr3 teacher claims not to group by ability - she gave DD's friend's mum a very stern talking to when she went to talk to her about groups (friend was upset because she believed herself to have 'gone down' a group, the whole point of the conversation was to reassure her, not to demand to know why she had done so, it sounds like a bit of a mess tbh). Still, funny that upon the teacher deciding that DD and her friend should skip to the next level of reading book, they've also changed reading groups. Coincidence, I'm sure ...

Don't bother grilling my dc, because i think that many of the settings are probably inaccurate. My dniece was always placed in the bottom groups in primary school. However, she got into a brilliant grammar school in Kent and recently passed 10 gcse's(a's and b's)

erebus Most schools I know go by number of sides. The more sides the higher the group.

Then again I've also seen some very wierd ones.

Transport - slowest to fastest (DS infants and friends old school)
characters - wimpiest to most heroic
animals - in alphabetical order (friends school)
colours - red/yellow/ green (my DS school)

Best one I saw was my mums school. Juniors so 32 in class. Tables are 1-6.

1/2 tops groups 3/4 bottom group 5/6 middle group 2/4/6 are the higher tables of the 2 groups.

Just goes to show second guessing is a waste of time! As I said my DS knows he's top maths, moved up as he came up middle from Infants (now yr 3) and bottom literacy.

My DS bought home his first set of spellings to learn last week. It said set C - I asked him where set A and B were. He gave me a

Oh yes, spelling groups, a recurring cause of angst among a few (to my knowledge, as I have said before I am on the periphery ); children who were in the "Top" spelling group last year - year 2 - have now been "Demoted" to group 2 out of three. Chuckle.

DS thinks his group is great. He comes home, can actually spell the words when stand alone, does all 5 practices in about 10 minutes and states he's done for the week. Thing is when he writing he often misspells these words as the writings hard for him therefore he needs to be in this group.

I'm lucky DS doesn't care what others are doing, probably as I don't as my Mum always had that attitude (she's a teacher which may be why!), and I've always told him I'll be proud if he does HIS best.

EG: If he was bottom group spellings but refused to try and learn them my boot would come out

I remember in YR2 his teacher telling me he needed to try and write quicker as he'd missed all his golden time finishing off a story they had to write BUT DS had already come home and told me he had decided to miss the golden time and write 'my bestest story ever!' instead of playing.

Decipher this one then!

DD has just told me that her numeracy class has tables named after precious stones! How the hell can I work THAT one out!

Are we going from say saphire to diamond Iamnotminterested!

this is brilliant ! i love this thread as i am SOOO guilty of doing it. i have even started using information gleaned from listening to readers at school to work out where my dd's are in the pecking orders!

So you think it's on the precious-ness (Is that a word?) of said stone?

Have been going through amount of letters in each name, what birth month they correspond to and amount of letters in the month etc - how fucking sad am I ???

Pestopasta steady now, 'tis all confidential, remember.

oooh yes i know is confidential, have said nothing and done nothing to noone. just inside my head i know a little more than i did before, that's all. but i do like it!

i am the same with the colour and shape group my dd1 is in! cant fathom it though! and the top group last year has been split up so i ahve no ideas at all now !

WHY DO TEACHERS DO THIS TO US!!!! WHY???????

pestopasta tell us about the colour and shape thing, maybe we can work it out

We had colours for spellings last year, no rhyme or reason I could find, but DD could reel them off in order even though they seemed utterly bizarre. (no I'm not giving examples someone might recognise them).
This year I think miss has 2 top tables mixing the best 8, which makes absolute sense because it allows the separating of certain chattering pairs. Yes DD2 you would chatter all day to x

startail, bizarrely spellings were easy to work out, either group 1, 2, 3 or 4 last year; this year they seem to be linked to literacy groups.

well dd1 was in white group for literacy last year which was clearly the top group with only 6 in it. now there are 3 in white group and dd1 is in indigo? and pentagons for numeracy which is def not the bottom group or the one up from that - but i dont know how many there are or whether it si any higher the top than that (other than the real hothoused, amazing handwriting, nkows hte wives of henry 8th girl is in this group - who i dont know which reading group she is in but not white!)