Do primary school teachers still meke children do this at teh start of a new term

[queenofthemountain]

write about
'what I did in the holidays

I'm pretty sure if my DD was asked to write about her holidays she'd forget all about the 2 weeks in Wales we had at the start of the 6 weeks, and write all about the time we went to the McDonalds on the Sunday before school starts again

Or is it just my kid that does this?

The day I gave birth to DS2 DH had a puncture. When asked in circle time at Tumble Tots if anyone had 'any news' I will let you guess what he told everyone.....

in primary two when dd2 was 6
they used to write something about the weekend every monday.

then you get to read their 'news' book at parents evening.

one entry was
'we played in the garden, mummy and daddy had beer and smoked'

In my class the first writing tasks will be reflecting on targets for the coming year and what they are looking forward to. We will be using it as part of the target setting process and to remind the children of the basic skills of punctuation and handwriting (and I can see what they've forgotten over the summer break). The second activity will be sharing what they know about this term's topic and writing questions about what they want to find out. The third will focused guided writing on their first target on the theme of researching the first strand of our topic.

I think writing about the summer is just a time filler. Yes some children enjoy it, other hate it. Time is precious and my priority is to get straight on with the objectives for this year and the new topic (Castle in my case).

My friend's daughter wrote about going to Brazil & visiting the rain forest. First thing my friend knew about her trip was the TA asking her if they'd had a lovely time, they hadn't been anywhere & her daughter had made it all up (yr1 must have been some interesting spellings).

No rede rederic mine did the same all through primary school

Sorry predictive text Red Eric

The postcard that we had to send from our holidays was written under duress - he was not in the slightest bit interested in sitting down to write when there was a football to kick about and a park to visit - and then there was a bit drama and lots of tears because he misspelt 'dear' (as kindly pointed out by his evil sister.

The text to accompany the photograph of him reading in an unusual location was typed up by me - again, not interested in writing as there was playing to be done, and he 'couldn't remember' anything about the reading experience anyway, apparently.

So that went well

As much as I think the writing up in class is fine, the holiday homework is getting to me too, DD's another one that's too busy playing to care about doing it and she has a lot to do (a scrapbook/diary, 2 maths worksheets and a 6 page questionnaire about her)

I've also misplaced the damn class bear which for some stupid reason DD was given for the whole holidays, when I find it I'm going to have to photo it in different bits of the garden with other bears and make out it went off to the teddy bears picnic!

I imagine that the holiday homework and activity will be used as the basis for the first literacy lesson of the new term. We have a probationer this year, so both she and her supervisor obviously thought this was a fantastic idea and one which ticks all the boxes

Yes our kids still have to do this. When my Ds was in primary school they did the Monday morning diary thing recording what they had done over the weekend, fast forward 6 months to parents evening when we got to read it, apparently most weekends we took him to the garden centre, at the time we lived in a 3rd floor flat with no garden.

Exactly what boxes does it tick?

The recount/literacy box...I think. I'm guessing though, but they must have thought that it would serve some purpose

Kids might not ask to write about their holiday, but they sure as hell want to talk about it!

DS2 will be in year 3 and they will be doing it, because he has SN so I have been asked to produce photographs of what we have done so he and his TA can talk about it.

We went on holiday, but if DD gets asked 'What did you do' she will probably not stop talking about the pizza express we had for my birthday, or the sleepover with her BF, because these seem to have been the big hits these holidays.

And that's fine...let those who want to talk about it talk, just don't make them write about it if they don't want to. There are plenty of posts on here from people who found this mortifying - quite why any teacher would think this is a good idea is beyond me, esp. when there are eleventy million other things they could get the children to do on their first day back.

So the one that doesn't really exist?

The very same Mrsz

I'm quite shocked by the number of NQTs and students being referred to the unit plans that were scrapped many years ago and were never ever statutory

Unit plans? We're in Scotland, and follow the Curriculum for Excellence

so definitely no recount boxes to tick

Hmm - in which case I have no idea why the Probationer and her supervisor thought these were good ideas

Just had a look at the Experiences and Outcomes for literacy under writing/creating texts - at a stretch it might fit here "I can convey information, describe events, explain processes or combine ideas in different ways". Possibly. If you hold it at arms length and turn it upside down.

but so could recording a science experiement

I agree. There is no basis or justification for it, other than 'I've always done it this way' or 'I think it will be a good idea and it fits into the CforE outcome so I can tick that box and get that one off my desk'