Can someone explain "golden time" to me?

[AvocadoAndFitch]

PFB is starting school in september. We keep on being told about "golden time" on a friday and haven't a fecking clue what they are on about.

The also do the "peg up" and in all the welcome pack its saying we should encourage DD to "keep her peg up" and ask every night if her peg is still up. Is this linked?

I'm guessing peg up is good and peg down is for bad behavior or is it linked to how well they do in the school work? is there only up or down or is there any in between notches we should know about? once its down can it go back up?

I'm also guessing Golden time is linked i.e. peg down no extra play or something? what happens if the loose their golden time? Do they have school work instead? But surely school work shouldn't be a negative thing.

I've probably got it completely wrong :( .

I'm not sure about the peg up/down bit as I am Key Stage 2 but in my school, you lose golden time throughout the week for negative behaviour - in five minute blocks upto 30 minutes. Golden time are fun activities - craft, lego, drawing, scooters, football (all different each week) - if you lose any golden time you go to the Key stage leader and have to sit out for the time lost - They don't do extra work they just have to sit and wait.

ditto on the golden time and re the the peg-up thing

At ours, the whole class are in it together so they can earn points and when they get however many it is, they get golden time on that friday. Except ours is called Mavis.

If they get over and beyond those points before the friday, they get Mavis Mania which is extra special activities.

dont know about the peg thing as I've never heard of it but Golden time is playtime on a friday that you get if you have remained on green all week. (They have a traffic light behaviour system that starts on green and can move down to amber and red and back up again if behaviour improves). My 2 like to take toys in on friday for golden time e.g. this week dd took 'Bop It' and ds took some beyblades and a small stadium.

What's Golden Time a bliddy waste of teaching time!

Mrz And savoycabbage, who thought up the name Mavis - it's great

In my DC's primary it seemed rather more ad hoc than the organised way it is linked to the behaviour policy as in the schools above. And it seemed to decrease/disappear as they got older (probably replaced by an extra PE time - like rounders game, or other enjoyable class activities)

Anyway, in reception surely the whole day is learning through play, so I can't see what golden time would add?

I wish schools would look for the positives - how much golden time have you earned rather than how much have you lost.

Savoycabbage if they lose time is it referred to as Minus Mavis?

At DD's school they can lose it in 1 minute blocks but its apparently quite easy to lose

In DS's school golden time starts in yr1. As others have said you start with 30 mins and lose 5 mins at a time if you misbehave.

In yr2 they do it slightly differently in that everyone starts with no golden time and you have to earn it by being good, working hard, good listening etc.

I cannot see the point of golden time in reception tbh.

Simpson, that is the way it should work from Y1. What is wrong with those Y1 teachers?!

Savoycabbage our school does whole-class golden time too. DD1 appears to spend it playing schools

In DS's school they have a peg up/down board. They move up or down dependant on their behaviour each day.

So it's something like this
Peg up once = verbal praise
Twice= sticker
Three times=marble in a jar, I think once they get enough marbles the class gets something?
Four times= head teacher award, recognition in assembly

I can't remember each stage of pegging down but I know they get a verbal warning and removed from class.

We have Golden time but I don't know of any pegs. Here the children are frogs starting all in the pond on Mondays. If your frog is on red or blue you're not allowed to have GT on Friday. dD said these children then have to do a task set by the teacher, kind of extra class work instead of free play.

Not sure if it brings a lot as I understand it that most times the same children are "red" frogs and excluded from GT.

At the school I work at golden time is last thing on Friday afternoon. Each child has a peg which is moved down in 5 min increments for bad behaviour. It isn't linked to the reward system, so if you lose any, it's gone iyswim. Golden time activities are pretty rubbish tbh but the children seem to enjoy it!

Sounds like the school believes in rewards and punishments.

They therefore need to implement a punishment system - so they use golden time.

Golden time is 30 minutes of playing on a Friday. And the whole point of it is - to be able to remove it, in 1 minute blocks, if school want to punish your child.

It is terrible - but very, very common.

It wastes valuable teaching time.
It's not fun for loads of kids
It defers punishment till Fri afternoon - and even if you do believe in rewards and punishments, surely you believe it should be instant?

But, nought you can do about.

Golden time is 'ach, it's the end of the week and we can't be arsed to teach, y'all can do whatever you like' in the guise of a reward.

In my very crapola opinion, what it does is reinforce that you only get to do what you want if you have been 'good', otherwise we will punish you by teaching you some more.

It's a totally fucked up way of ensuring that children see education as punishment, and free time as the ultimate goal.

It's enough to send you running for the hills, whilst writing your dereg letter.

And it is completely ubiquitous.

The peg thing will be another version of labelling the bad kids for all to see and acknowledge in visual format. The really shitty teachers will leave the named pegs on red when they invite all the mummies in for something or other, so that everyone is fully aware that little johnny is a badly behaved shit bag, and they can all safely ostracise him further by making sure the parents kids avoid him out of school as well.

Thanks for the replies. It's a lot clearer now and exactly what I feared.

Oh dear, think we may end up clashing with the school on this, I hate it when people think doing the right thing should be rewarded constantly.

I wish they had mentioned this when we viewed the school and asked about discipline.

DD goes into a panic if she thinks she has done wrong, so it will be a huge learning curve for her but copable hopefully.

But when DD2 gets there next year she may challenge this system. She has special needs (but her consultants fully expect her to be in main stream school) and lacks the understanding about good and bad.

She could quite happily sit on her own all day doing nothing and would see interaction with others or doing something active (she has coordination issues) as a chore. She would most probably act up to ensure she doesn't have her "golden time"

This school also does "golden time" all afternoon, so if no actual learning takes place would I have a case to collect her early on a Friday? At least until she is 5? she will never gain 100% attendance so I wouldn't be worried about that.

Golden Time is a concept developed by Jenny Mosley about 20 years ago. It is a positive behaviour management tool. Children start the week with x minutes of Golden Time and then lose time in 5 minute intervals if they are naughty.

I no longer use it in my class. I prefer the philosophy of Alfie Kohn. He advocates relationship building between teacher and student to alter behaviour. He argues the positive systems merely ensure compliance - I want more than that for my pupils. I want them to understand why they need to behave in school. I still use other positive strategies for children with ASN.

I teach upper primary which has a bearing on my decision as the children are at an age where they can reason. I would reconsider if I was teaching infants.

Was Mosley particularly specific about what Golden Time should consist of, star? And aware that it might elevate 'free time' to a more desirable position that actual education?

Or was that not really important if it had the desired effect of controlling the children?

I'm fascinated how all this stuff talks about the need to behave, rather than making the actual learning experience exciting enough to get children's attention and encourage compliance that way... (and support sn so that they can)

I haven't read up on it, but it's v interesting. Compliance rather than actual learning seems to be the aim of education.

AvocadoAndFitch don't worry Jenny Mosley has ideas for children "beyond the golden model" [vomit]

Children are only in schools for 6 hours a day (and that includes lunch and play times ) so turning over 3hours to Golden Time really annoys me ...fortunately we don't subscribe

She was quite specific about how the programme should run. It is part of a whole school development with many elements - golden rules, golden tickets, circle time, etc. It seems to be based on the self esteem movement that was very popular in the 90s. After I read 'Nutureshock' I searched for alternatives in my practice. As a school, we have moved away from the self esteem model to the resilience model pioneered in Australia. We are currently using 'Bounce Back'. We also have a Scottish Govt initiative 'restorative justice' in place.

Anecdotally, I would add I never thought Golden Time worked. The children who never lost Golden Time, never lost Golden Time. The children who always lost Golden Time, always lost Golden Time. It didn't seem to improve behaviour!

It is a lot of work if the programme is implemented to the fullest extent. I have seen it implemented poorly though - kids just randomly playing for a hour. That hour, therefore, being lost to teaching time. Given there are only 25 a week it adds up!

But I think the good thing about golden time is that the standardly "good" children do feel that they get something as a reward for being good.

At school you can find that the children who get most stickers/rewards are for being "not naughty". My eldest pointed out in reception that to maximise stickers you needed to be bad in the morning and then you'd get stickers for not being bad in the afternoon. The thing about golden time is that the dc can feel they've earned it by being good, when the quiet, never naughty but not outstandedly good children can easily get overlooked in rewards.

We used to use GT and I hated it. Stargirl summed it up when she said The children who never lost Golden Time, never lost Golden Time. The children who always lost Golden Time, always lost Golden Time. It didn't seem to improve behaviour!

Those who lost GT weren't bothered - it was more of a shrug your shoulders and sit looking bored situation.

Also, as a teacher I resented spending the time on 'activites' which were just time-fillers- there are lots of interesting, stimulating educational things that I would rather be doing with the pupils

Luckily our current head doesn't subscribe to the whole GT philosophy

DD's school do Enrichment Activities on Friday afternoons, I think that's far more productive and enjoyable than 'Golden Time'. It's a small village school, but all the classes and children do it; they have various coaches and tutors come in each week and the children are split into 6 smaller groups of 9 or 10 pupils (there are only 55 pupils on roll) and, from what DD has told me they've done things ranging from forestry and rowing club to cookery