10 things you probably would not expect about primary schools

[meredeux]

Come and help me make a list for all those parents out there who are about to send their children to school for the first time. What did know one tell you but you learned through experience?

Here is my first one:
YOU (the parent) will teach your child to read. The school will provide reading books and someone (probably not the teacher) will listen to your child for a few minutes at a time in the first couple of years maybe once a week but your child will learn to read because you will teach them that (using the school's reading books which the teacher will issue).

why do you think that littlefrieda? it seems to work well, far less tediouse than an alternative to reading to the teacher everyday. my dd enjoys the variety, she can read well and has really built her confidance in providing her own motivation and desire to read.

Blimey - I started off reading this thread thinking it was a bit of fun. 100 scrolls later and it's a bunfight!!
My DS's school is fantastic but many of these gross generalisations have a spot of truth in them if taken in the light hearted way I think the OP meant them to be taken in. We all know reading at home is reinforcement, but after you've been doing it for 10 years with several children you can recite the bloody things just by seeing the picture on the front whilst trying to maintain the same level of excitement you had with the first child!

Lighten up!!!

Perhaps it's time your children's school got some new reading books conorsrockers ORT by any chance?

Hmmmm...don't think it was meant to be taken this seriously.
Anyhow..for what it's worth

1. If any of the male teachers are cute, the standard of dress for parents evening will shoot up and you may find yourself stammering like a teen on a date!
2. You will invariably make friends with the parents of your DCs best friend, only for the little darlings to fall out and leave your fledgling friendship dead at the starting line.
3. Party bags can become a mini competition.
4. You will worry far more about the small stuff than your child will.
5. One of the playground mums will be incredibly beautiful with a pert bottom ad your DH will think she's a lovely lady!
6. You can't keep up the full face of makeup and ironed clothes on the school run after the first week, cleaning your teeth is good enough, hair brushed is a bonus.
7. However good or awful the school is, and there are definately both, as long as you do your best it'll all turn out ok eventually, although you may have a nervous tick, skin like a rhinos hide and a wine addiction by the end of it.
8. School dinners really aren't that yummy. (and the dishes are bizzarely named..what on earth is Festival Fish?)
9. Packed lunches can also become a mini competition..save yourself and stick with the ham sandwich, frazzles and banana option. (a yogurt will always be partially eaten and ingrained in the seams of your lunch box)

10.A sense of humour will really help.

Mrz - I was referring to the ones that the school send home! I'm not quite at the point of insisting that they renew their entire reading library for my benefit ..... however, if I have to struggle through 'and the magic key began to glow' one more time .... . Only kidding! I preferred the old ladybird 'Jane and Peter' books. This is Jane. This is Peter. This is Pat. The Dog. .... Aaarrrrgggghhhh!!!

Imagine you have 30 in a class, with one teacher and one TA. If the teacher listened to each child read every day, that would take 7.5 hours a day. Oh, whoops- a school day is 6.5 hours. So half with the teacher and half with the TA. But all the mumsnet parents will be complaining that their child didn't get the teacher for reading " only" the TA.

Do people seriously think the teacher should read with every child every day? Who's teaching the rest of the class whi,e she's doing this? Even if she reads once a week with each child, that's more than an hour a day when they aren't teaching the rest of the class. Not good. That's why the teacher does group work, nd guided reading, and the practice bit falls to the prents. Like learning to drive- lessons with a driving instructor- practice with dad.

My ds (Yr2) says he rarely reads to anyone anymore, as he is in the top set in his class. When he does they simply listen to them read, very little interaction. I do not care who he reads to, as long as he is not ignored because he and his set are brighter than the rest of the class. This is not an uncommon complaint of the parents of the above average student and devising your own homework/workbooks is the norm if you want your child to not be bored to death.

I would say be prepared for an insane obsession with reading and writing and ignoring the fact that some kids are more interested in maths and science. There needs to be a more balanced approach to subjects for those that are profecient in reading/writing.

I'm suggesting they should get decent reading scheme books for the benefit of all pupils conorsrockers

Our primary doesn't have a reading scheme. The children choose whichever book they want from the class library to bring home whenever they feel like it. no levels, no competition, no Biffy and Chip. Funnily enough,they all learn to read.

Remember that reading books are not intended to entertain adults, they are intended to reinforce reading skills and entertain small children. Small children like Biff and Chip and looking for the magic key. They think they are interesting and funny. I can't understand why mumsnetters are so anti- they are SOOO much better than all the others! Have you not come across Red Hat and Blue Hat? [shudder]

teacherwith2kids - why do you call it reading rehearsal? I have never once read anything for rehearsal purposes with my DD at home. We have revised what she read in class that day (ie she has re-read aloud to me the GPCs and small accompanying text) in French, and she brings home reading books in English to read aloud to me (we don't bother, as they are useless, dull and way beneath her level and aren't part of any kind of progression - we read other books instead) that no-one else in the class is reading at that time and that no teacher will ever listen to her read.

DS1 finally cracked reading when he was given a Star Wars annual for Christmas: he finally had something that I was not prepared to read to him that was worthwhile decoding.

And after that he could just read. I think the content is important and none of my 4 children like(ed) Biff and Chip.

If you decide to go in to the teaching profession and invest a large amount of emotional energy in to what you do for your class be prepared to aquire the skin of a rhino as for some people nothing will ever be good enough.
On the other hand you will look agog a the professional standards of a small minority and bang your head on a brick wall at the school lottery that is the UK and the unfaireness of it all.

seeker I take your point entirely about the resources needed for a teacher to listen to everyone read every day.
But many DC are not being listened to by the parents.
I volunteered for several years at ly local school precisiely because of this. The parents simply did not listen at home. The teacher had no time (and the TA was forever on sick leave) and someone had to do it!
The HT asked me. So I agreed.

The thing is though, even with me listening to the DC I still felt the teacher shoudl listen at least once per week in order to assess their progress. I'm not qualified to do that in any way shape or form (not a teacher, no teaching experience and dyslexic into the bargain). But the teachers never found time. The lieteracy levels were shockingly poor as you can imagine.

Anyone who invests "a large amount of emotional energy" in what they do should be admired as far as I am concerned.

Surely the point about the 'resources' needed for the teacher to hear reading every day is a helpful reinforcement of what the OP originally said ie that it won't happen, so don't expect it, so where's the disagreement on that? ??
This did not start as a a thread about how things 'should' be - god know there are enough of those on MN, but on the reality of our everyday experience for the benefit of those who are to come - sady has been hijacked by the usual 'lack of resources' whine.
One the points I would make to newbies at teh scholl gate is that I was not expectign the reading scheme to be as interestign as Biff & Chip, was thinking it woudl all be 'Janet & John' - hilarious illustrations - I used to eagerly await the next instalment of those guys

When DS2 was learning to read, I used to read with him every night. I really liked his teacher and she's now become a personal friend, so there are no issues there.

However, I used to notice that I was the only person marking up his reading record and I always had to write "NEW BOOK PLEASE" because it would have taken a couple of weeks to change it otherwise. I thought that might be because the school kept another record elsewhere, but when I started to help out, I found that they don't.

I taught DS2 , to sound out the words, what the sounds were, to use expression, and to read ahead to improve his expression, to pause at commas and full stops and finally to read to himself and discuss the text with me.
Maybe there is more to learning to read than this but I am blowed if I know what is missing.

I also found, when I started to help at school, that DS was only 1 of 3 children who could read pretty much anything by the end of year 1, so its not as if the other children didn't need the help they were not receiving, except from volunteers like me.

meredeux our primary doesn't leave the TA in charge when its none contact time, they get in a very experienced, recently retired teacher for th afternon.

JiltedJohnsJulie - that's good. Legally, I believe teachers are allowed to leave a TA to take a class, but the teacher has to leave the lesson plan. So some schools do this to save money.

Meredeux that would be a large number of teachers in my experience.
However now my Dd is in reception and it is really weird to be on the other side of the gate!

And unfortunately despite your average teacher's or parent's utopia there are some schools that fail children as well as parents who fail their children, as well as parents who influence children's experience of school etc etc... As well as great schools and teacher/parent partnerships - we've personally been very lucky in that respect.
Anyway can I add:

It is almost impossible to tread the fine line between what your 4 yr old tells you her friends did/said and the reality of what happened. Most of it is best left alone unless causing real distress over a length of time.

I think a number of parents new to the current school system (myself included ) assume that their children will read with the teacher on a 1:1 basis, not necessarily daily, but certainly a few times a week. This was certainly a hot topic at the school gates throughout YR and Y1 at DS's school.

I don't know whether all of us parents have a very hazy memory of what things were like when we were at school (I certainly do as it was so long ago ) or whether teaching methods have changed. I am not suggesting that teachers are not teaching our children to read but I think it would help that the methods of teaching (for all classes) are explained at the beginning of each school year. Not in great detail, but enough to ensure parents' expectations are reasonable eg in YR there will be daily sessions of phonics, various group reading activities, how often child will be listened to reading on an individual basis etc. My DS's teachers always provide an outline of what the targets are for the year, and the various topics they will be studying but maybe slightly more detail is required of the methods used.

I am a parent volunteer and I have found it very helpful to be able to see the various strategies used to teach children but not every parent has this opportunity and hence the expectation gap between parents and teachers

for what it is worth here are some of the things I have had to learn through experience:

1. PE kit probably won't be worn for the first few weeks in YR
2. You will know when the PE kit has been worn for the first time as your child will come home a) with their uniform on back to front, b) with someone else's uniform on or c) a mixture of (a) and (b)
3. Check PE kit regularly to ensure your child has not grown out of it, otherwise you may find out on Sports Day that hotpants/cropped top is not a good look for your DS
4. You will learn a new language; CVC, phoneme, grapheme, split vowel diagraph, partitioning, chunking. Your child will be an expert on these terms and will not understand why you look at them blankly when they talk about them
5. Be prepared to be amazed at what it is possible to do on the interactive whiteboard and be even more amazed at what your 4 year old can do on said whiteboard
6. Baked beans and pasta sauce will always find their way down the front of your child's jumper
7. Do not put a clean jumper on your child on Monday as school dinners on that day always involve either baked beans or pasta sauce
8. Your child will never remember what they have done at school, but they will remember who has been naughty and will tell you in great detail what they did
9. If you are lucky your child will remember to bring home newsletters/trip request forms but usually a week late and usually in a crumpled (I folded it for you mummy) heap at the bottom of the bookbag

10. If possible get newsletters etc e-mailed to you

Rule 1. It is a name tag, not an electronic homing device
Rule 2. Asking your child what happened at school is unlikely to provide you with any meaningful answers (IME, it's best to wait until they want to talk, and listen then.)
Rule 3. Expect to continue to have as much input into your child's education as you did previously.
Rule 4. The teacher is the fount of all knowledge (in your DCs eyes) - get over it.

I only got to the first post but my experience has beeen completely the opposite. School taught my DD to read. I am in awe of what they have done - I know it's normal and to be expected and all that but she is a fluent reader and that has nothing to do with me. Obviously I have provided the right environment for literacy but I have never once sat down and taught her letters/phonics/anything. Thank you teachers

Agree with starshitterrorist's third point. You just have to pick up the rules as you go along. I think it took me a few years to learn where to put the 'Dinner Money' cheque .

It is a shared job though. I remember a friend saying that at Parents evening she overheard the teacher asking a Dad if he read to his son at home? "Listen, it's your job to learn them to read" came the reply. Couldn't help laughing.