Marked work - NO positive/encouraging comments - normal?

[EarthboundMisfit]

Hello. Feeling a bit sad for Y1 DS today. He brought all his school exercise books home tonight. I've enjoyed looking at his work, but am a bit upset by the marking.

He's doing well at school... lots of 'mastery' on his report. But on every piece of work all that's been written by his teacher is what to improve. 'Watch this' 'Slow down' 'Try to do x' etc.

I nearly fainted when I saw a smiley face next to one piece. It was an evaluation of a junk model he made at home and spent hours on. The comment was - 'you have done well at evaluating how you could improve your model'.

There's one piece of work marked by a Y2 teacher who covered their class. It's nice...it has a 'well done, you've done a great job of x', followed by a suggestion for how to improve.

All I can think is that if I'd received that marking for a year I'd feel like shit about myself.

Am I being unreasonable and PFB? Is this normal?

Thanks.

Surely most Y1s could read that, or if not, it could be adapted to the child....whether or not it's effective?

At the beginning of Y1 most won't be able to read that and at the end of Y1 many still won't be able to.

Really, is that true? Is that within the "normal" range for age? Genuine question.

In Y1 most children won't have been taught spelling for sound /s/ in space, the spelling of /oe/ in most, or the spelling of /r/ in writing or how to tackle polysyllabic words or suffixes so no most won't be able to read the sentences

That really surprises me. My kids have just learned those as we went along, when reading non-school books. I'd have thought by Y1 those kinds of phrases would come up during class work often.

Lots of kids only have books in school and don't read or are read to in the home

They might hear them but how often would they see them?

I asked my ds, he said if they were learning about "adjectives", word "adjective" is always already written on the white board. Also I've seen lots of posters hanged up in the class rooms walls about what they are learning about.
So i expect they actually see those words quite often.

Adjectives wasn't one of the words I mentioned ... It's pretty straightforward to decode without being displayed but the words I mentioned contain spellings for sounds they are unlikely to have encountered in Y1.

I thought you are responding to jam's post?

"well done you remembered most finger spaces."
"Super use of adjectives"
" Please try to keep your writing on the line"

I would expect yr1 to know less/more/most from maths, space from space topic(which is always seems to be yr1 topic), and writing is written on the cover of writing book? I assumed only word they may not see regularly was adjective, but from my ds's comment, they do.

They know the terms but many won't be able to read the words independently

Space isn't always a Y1 topic I teach Y1 and definitely didn't do a space topic

My writing books have the child's name and English on the cover

And I don't have adjectives displayed all year round only when it's a focus because I simply don't have space for everything and prefer to cover my display boards with children's work not labels.

my ds's school seems to do same thing every year.

I've only seen my ds's books so I don't know about others, but all the teacher except his yr1 teacher seems to write quite detailed comment all the time.
Yr1 teacher's comment was "well done" over and over again, clearly showed no interest in his learning.

I've never taught the same topics two years running

Or perhaps she talks to him in real time when it's more useful rather than put effort into writing for parents, Ofsted, school leaders

I do agree it's better to talk to the children rather than writing comments which may not be read.
But for yr1 teacher, she diffinitely had something against my ds.(or me) At parents' evening even my dh realised she wasn't intersted.

I'm a parent at an OFSTED outstanding school. I think this trend starts in toddlerhood. As parents we are told to give specific praise so instead of "What a great picture of Daddy!" We are supposed to say stuff like "I like Daddy's blue hat." Giving general praise doesn't apparently raise self-esteem as much as specific praise.

The "next time don't forget to xxx" type comments are for OFSTED. It's seen as evidence that they are pushing the kids on to improve. It does make me but my kids seem resilient enough not to take it as a negative.

My child is much older but he gets "3stars and a wish" and peer marking for projects done for homework. The peer marking has a list of things that the classmate is supposed to tick.

The closest that children can get to fab class work is a comment like "You have shown how to do long division"

Maybe 'adjective' was a bad example to use...I'm in year 2

I was just trying to illustrate for people who weren't sure...

But even Year ones have these comments written in their books. Usually they have also been given verbal feedback. The children are encouraged to ask the teacher/TA if they can't read it, or are not sure what it means, especially for 'Response Time ', which is when they do corrections etc.

Adjectives are as good an example as any

The children are encouraged to ask the teacher/TA if they can't read it, or are not sure what it means, especially for 'Response Time ', which is when they do corrections etc.

Which is exactly why it's a waste of teacher time ...talk to children

Irvine I'd be really surprised if your child's teacher hasn't given verbal praise and feedback all year

not real scientific research, only educational "research"

Yes yes to this. Educational research involves the Head saying 'let's do this for a year and see if it works' and then concluding after a year that it does work and aren't I great for thinking of it, without considering confirmation bias, whether any link is causative or merely correlative, blah blah I could go on, but most headteachers haven't a clue so what's the point in arguing

It's always worth challenging stupid ideas that cause unnecessary work