boys in school playground - calling all teachers!

[baconsandwich]

My DS's class (Year 4) has been banned from playing Tag a few weeks before Xmas because one boy in the class found it difficult / was being left out. All the other classes are allowed to play Tag. He's a nice enough kid but is generally disruptive in class, seems to have some problems socialising and generally annoys a lot of the other boys. I don't know whether there are particular issues more than that. Now they have designed another game which sounds v similar to Tag but have called it something else, been playing it happily enough since start of term until this week, when something has gone wrong, said boy has had a playground meltdown and class teacher says she's about to ban this game too. This is a school that doesn't allow ball games.

What's reasonable in this situation and what should school be doing? Do 8 year old boys need to run around like mad at playtime and blow off steam? Should they have some more structured play? Should teacher be trying to get them to sit and talk to each other about the playing problems? What would best practice be? Do teachers even get taught this stuff? (Teacher is generally v good but is newly qualified and maybe lacking in experience.)

Yes they do need to be running around. I think I would take your concerns to the teacher and if you're not happy about the resolution then ask to have a member of the senior leadership team in the meeting or arrange just to meet with them. It really depends on the institution and placement schools the teacher trained at as to what experience or training they've had in playtimes. Tag is a harmless game, I can see that the teacher wants to include this other boy but compared with some of the games they play tag is very tame. Hope that helps!

Who told you that Tag is banned because of this one boy? I ask because it seems very unlikely, and I wonder whether you are getting half a story from your ds!

Yes every child needs to run around like mad on occasion and a blanket ban for one class seems unfair and foolish

I'd be surprised if it were his class teacher who was solely responsible for this ban - it won't be her turn for playground duty that often. It might be a very experienced member of staff, or a playground supervisor who sees every playtime, who has spotted that this group is not behaving as every other year group does, and that this is leading to ostracism of one pupil.

What does it say in the anti-bullying policy? it does sound as if there is systematic ganging up on this child, and you are right - it does need to be tackled firmly. As it is jot your DC who is suffering here, I am not sure that you have any real standing in the issue. But passing on your concerns about how the pack of boys are behaving might help stiffen their resolve to tackle this thoroughly.

Yes, running around at breaktime is good for all children. But this does not have to take the form of tag, and certainly not repeated games which persistently exclude one child.

I wonder how the teacher actually knows what is going on in the playground, they will not be on duty every break, so how can they ban a game they don't see happening?
I would be tempted to not bother talking to the teacher but go direct to the head teacher and ask the question of them what is going on at playtime because you are getting very mixed messages from your child. To be banning running games simply for one child is just the tail wagging the dog, the school needs to be addressing the issues that the other child has.
Mind you as the school already bans ball games anything is possible!

Whilst children do need to run around and let off steam tag is not the only running around they can do. Yes, tag can be a fairly harmless game, or there could be a class where no matter how often a teacher reminds them of the rules it becomes a problem; grabbing by the hood of a coat as a "tag" (parents concerned / complaining that the child's neck has been hurt, their child has been strangled or coat has been torn); or rugby tackle style "tags" where a child ends up falling over; or a "tag" that is a hard shove and the child falls flat on their face. Maybe there have been numerous (understandable) parental complaints about injured children, then the school is obliged to do something. I would imagine there is a bigger picture than one child causing the ban.

Several boys have same story regarding the cause of the ban. But that's not the point really. I think the point is that school dont seem to be tackling the bullying issue and think that a ban is helpful and that they have discharged their responsibilties for dealing with the issue by having put the ban in place. I think there's much more to it. Will look at bullying policy and see what it says.

Many thanks

As for banning ball games- if what we're talking about is banning football, there are often really good reasons for doing this. Football tends to take over the whole playground, thereby leaving only tiny amounts of space for girls and non footballing boys. It also often triggers lots of unpleasant behaviour- leaving out, fighting,- all sorts. Banning football makes boys, in particular more imaginative in their play- many default to football and if that's not an option they think of other things to do!

My previous school banned ball games in winter at certain playtimes - very restricted playround, field out of use and year five and six boys that got so heated in their game that it spanned the whole playground. The number of poor little recpetion and year one children that were flattened by a player, or hit hard in the face with a ball, or told they had to play (stand) against the wall so they didn't get in they way .... Hence the ban on balls at mixed playtimes until we could get on to the field in warmer weather. It's not all sour grapes; it's tryin to keep all children safe.

How could they enforce this for one class? Surely they dont all play with their own class at playtime? At the schools I know they play across classes and even across years especially where there are siblings/neighbours/friends from cubs etc

i can never understand why fields have to be out of use for the winter, surely if boys bring in footwear for outside

restricting any childrens games is pretty bad imo

It is in every teacher's interests for the children to let off steam by running around at playtime. If this particular game has been banned, then I would suggest it's because it is causing more harm than good. It doesn't mean they can't run at all.
My Year 4s were doing something similar last term - looked suspiciously like Bulldog to me (which is banned) but they'd changed a couple of rules and called it something else. Anyway, there were endless hassles with it, hordes of children stampeding about, and children both in the game and out of it being sent flying. We had to call a halt, and make suggestions for other games for them to play.

We built an extra playground just so our Year 5/6 boys ( and girls!) could play football without trampling all over the younger children ( and we have a seperate R/1 playground too!) Children doo tend to get overenthusiastic in tag and it's not always the harmless game it first appears!

If children charged about on our field when it's wet, it would be churned up into a mud bath in minutes. Then the grass wouldn't grow back for the summer.

And as q school governor, I can tell you that one thing that unites many parents in fury is their precious Algernons coming home muddy! Personally, I think that if a child can wear the same school jumper two days running, something's gone wrong somewhere, but many disagree.....

seeker, i would prefer my son to come home muddy everyday and to know he'd been allowed on the grass even in heavy rain!

grass isn't all it's cracked up to be

Me too. Well, me too about the mud. Not me too about the trashed field. Would hate to have to cancel summer sport things because of winter football.

would be good if schools had room for multi-sports areas for football and ball games maybe. our primary schools are having to build on the play areas to make the intake larger!

If only, southeastastra, wouldn't that make life easier for lots of things - wet playtimes, better / more PE lessons, spare space for drama and music lessons. We are full to capacity with out a spare cupboard, and we're not allowed to build on our field to enlare our classroom facilities, let alone a sports hall / drama studio / ICT suite / library!

Banning the games is like banning clenched fists because someone got punched. Massively misses the point

There needs to be some intensive work with the whole class on behaviour and class identity. Punishing the class exacerbates the problem IME- they then have the reputation as The Bad Class and see no point in trying to behave in any other way.

In an ideal world, I would be completing a sociogram, using circle time and off-site team building activities in order to strengthen the class identity and encourage the children to include and support one another in their play, (publically) praising and rewarding them for doing so. Instilling class pride goes a long way in helping children to support one another, IME.

I would ask if it is possible to refer this class to the LEA's behaviour support team, providing that one still exists.

Oh, don't get me started in this. At our school they banned both tag (too dangerous) and football (someone slipped and fell this year). I think it is entirely ridiculous, because it doesn't give them much options to play. They finally allowed soccer to be played again, but only if an adult is out there playing with them. What are the odds of the adult being close enough to the one that is falling to catch them?

Argh. I wish this had an edit post function. I'm American, so I forgot to refer to soccer properly as football.

Unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world, intensive PSHE doesn't solve the situation straight away and funding cuts and curriculum pressures mean other solutions need to be found in the mean time. Not saying that circletime, SEAL, PSHE, Citizenship et al, are not being used, but if children are getting hurt we do need to stop that aspect immediately while we deal with solving the issue in th long term. And finding LEA behaviour support ... the phrase hens teeth comes to mind round my area; when we do see them it is for individuals with far deeper and more severe issues than it appears the OPs school has.

Hence my use of the term 'ideal world', AbigailS. Unfortunately you are right, there are almost no behaviour support teams left.

However, I must point out that I am not talking about generic PSHE and citizenship work, but targeted behavioural interventions, of which circle time (in its original and intended format, not the one used in most schools which bears no resemblance to its original intention) and team building activities form part.

I know this can work, and can work very quickly, as I have done it.

You can exclude perpetrators, but if you want to eradicate the problem, the school are going about it in completely the wrong way and are actually implementing measures which are counter-productive. The bullied child may now be blamed by the others for the banning of Tag; which is all the more divisive if the rest of the school are still allowed to play it

Sounds like banning yet another game for this one boy (if that actually happened and your DS isn't mistaken) wouldn't make a difference... He may get left out no matter what the others play.

Tag and football banned at our school. My yr 3 ds and a handful of pals play Super Mario brothers and they love it . Not entirely sure how they go about it but it involves one being each Mario Luigi ,Bowser, Mushroom ,Yoshi and catching each other and they love it.