Very boy heavy class R

[icarriedawatermelon2]

25 boys, 5 girls. Any experience?

??

Challenging!!

Sounds like fun, I'm sure the teacher will handle it brilliantly.

Not sure what you think might happen?

It'll be interesting! If the kids are under 6, the boy / girl difference won't make much of a difference imo.

I disagree that it's immaterial. If you have a girlie girl, they will want more friends with girl interests - brownies, ballet etc. What if they just don't get on with the other 4 girls?

My dd's class has 20 boys, 10 girls. They class dynamic is loud and boisterous and challenging. Dd, who is shy, has struggled and has not flourished.

DD's class is 14 boys, 6 girls. It's completely, unremarkably fine. DD has 4 close friends: 2 boys; two girls.

My DD2's class has 21 boys and 9 girls. It certainly changes the dynamic of a class I'd say. And severely cuts down her friendship options as she's getting older (now in year 4)

Having said that, there's not a lot the school dan do about it is there? There's only 8 girls in the other year 4 class there must've been something in the water!

For my DS's (twins) it was 23 boys, 7 girls. The girls were all really good friends and I think had a great time. Only thing for the boys, very competitive and a lot of testosterone as they got older. Saying that, my DSs are at an all boys secondary and don't seem to be having any problems.

My DD1 entered Reception in a two form entry where both forms had 20 boys and 10 girls. My DD1 was really lucky, her class had a great dynamic, the boys and girls played together and were generally pretty well behaved (despite DD1 being very quiet and girly she had loads of boys who were friends). The other form had some very boisterous boys and it has never seemed to work as well, however that is due more to personalities than gender.

It feels like there is a disproportionate amount of young boys at the moment. DD2's nursery is 17 boys and 4 girls.

DS is in yr2 and his class is 20 boys and 5 girls, luckily all the girls get on really well and there have been no problems tbh.

The whole class mixes really well (apart from the class bully).

Reading this thread, you have to ask - where are all the girls?! We are surrounded by boys in our friendship circle too.

12 girls, 18 boys, they all get on well, but dd does tend to play with boys, doesn't click with any of the girls. She is used to her little db, and likes boy activities but not a tomboy iyswim.

DD is in YrR and her class started with 6 boys and 1 other girl, another girl has started now so there is 3 in total. To be honest, I have no worries; DD is in a small village school and all the kids are very close and play together well. DD often tells me she was playing with girls from the classes above hers.

Is it a 2 form entry school? DD's class is boy heavy but she plays equally with children in the "other" class so in total not a bad number of girls. If not, can they play with children in other year groups?

I think Reception is potentially a hard year for a boy heavy class. A lot is free play and DD's activities of choice were always playing house, mums and babies and drawing/writing. Which there were always plenty of girls to join in with, but on the odd boy or 2 was interested.

DS1 was alternately in a 'boy heavy' class in Yr 4 and the following year a 'girl heavy' class.

The boy heavy class was not good for girls or for boys like DS who is not happy in a physically aggressive environment when teachers don't clamp down on it. Girls basically just tried to stay as far away from boys as posisble to avoid the possibility of physical interaction.

DS1 then went to a girl heavy environment where he was happier but where some girls still did not want boys near them and very verbally shunned them. A few girls did like playing with DS1 though as he is quite gentle.

I think it is the sheer physicality of boys, especially where it is not controlled by teachers, that is a problem for girls.

My dd's year was 23 boys and 7 girls in both classes. It went up to 9 girls at one point but still very boy heavy and she's now in Y4 and used to it.

Some of the girls have switched classes as they struggled to fit in with the girls in their class who inevitably became really close. Dd fits in very well as she is very girly and has typical girly interests so there hasn't been a social problem but if my daughter wasn't I'd be really worried about the lack of choice of playmates.

Some of her teachers have been quite honest about the problems of having a boy heavy class. Most of the boys in the class are taken by a different teacher for half a day of the week which apparently leaves the girls and less physical boys having a calmer classroom for a while and achieving a lot due to the decrease in testestrone.

My older son (now in Y6) has been in a girl heavy class (20 girls, 10 boys) and finds that some teachers expect the boys to behave like girls (these are his words!) which is unfair to the boys. He has the opposite problem to my dd in group work- the girls side together and don't take suggestions from the boys and try to mother hen quieter boys.

I've got 9 boys and 4 girls in my class. The girls are always falling out and would probably benefit from a couple more in the class, but one of the parallel classes is an even worse ratio and has got lots of troublesome hyper boys.

What do you want school to do? Make the teachers have more girl babies?

Yes, DD had 12 boys and 2 girls in the class!! She was initially gutted as she was a girlie girl. But slowly she discovered that boys are pretty cool and it was wonderful for her development as she got to explore a new side of her personality that wouldn't have developed if she had been in a 50:50 class.

Even now (age 8) she is happy to play with boys and girls, even though she's in a new school that has a 50:50 mix and the girls andboys have segregated.

I think this happened because it was a private mixed school with an excellent girls private school nearby.

DS's class is pretty much 50:50, but agree that there seem to be many more boys than girls around eg family, friends, nursery... I thought we were all supposed to be going to be having girls because of the oestrogen in the drinking water or summat!!

My DD's class (yr 3) is 21 girls and 10 boys so maybe we got the oestrogen in the water here!

'Reading this thread, you have to ask - where are all the girls?'

They are in Bristol

DD's reception class has 21 girls and 9 boys.

Where we moved from was also girl-heavy. At baby massage there were only 2 boys. At toddlers there were only a few boys and at swimming all girls.

I wonder of I should advise my boys to go to uni in Bristol?

my dd is in year 3 and there have never been more than 6 girls out of 30+.

the only thing i object to is that all the girls are spread out on the seating plans, so that you never get a table of all girls or a table where girls have the majority voice.

this annoys me because i feel we are teaching our Daughters to defer to boys/men.

I would much rather see a random placement of girls and boys.

Having said all that.... I'm more annoyed about the policy of sitting a badly behaved child next to a good one, so that the good behaviour rubs off.... unfortunatly it works the other way too.