Pre Reception Class teacher seems too reliant on screens and videos to teach

[amusedparent]

Hi,

My DS just started in the pre reception class at a private prep school and it seems to me they use videos /cartoons to teach way more often than they should. It seems like my DS spends more than an hour looking at the tv screen in his class through the day. Is it common? Should I raise this with the teacher/school? Could the school be doing it only in the early days to help the kids to settle in and 'like' coming to the school? Sorry for so many questions but will love to hear everyone's thoughts on this!

How do you know?

I mean, over the course of six hours that isn't crazy- there are lots of phonics songs etc.

But are you getting this information from your child? Mine can't remember what he had for lunch.

Well... How do you know?

Our nursery teachers often have something on first thing in the early days so that the children who are finding it harder to settle can have calm and an adult's attention until settled. But it wouldn't be for an hour - give it a few weeks.

I think teaching through cartoons and play was the thing for early years full stop.

Sounds fairly standard.

And who is telling you that they look at screens for an hour a day? Your child? Are pre-Reception kids known for being able to accurately tell the time? Wouldn't have thought so myself.

Pre reception I would expect them to be playing. But I guess that's what you've paid for. 'Learning' for 3 year olds.

It’s depends on what the screen is being used for.
And do you mean an interactive white board rather than the T.V?
I don’t really know what a Pre-reception class consists of? Like preschool?
If they’re just watching Peppa pig for an hour then that’s not great. If it’s phonics/number/knowledge of the world based stuff then that might be fine.
It’s also very early days and I’d give them a bit longer to get settled before I started questioning too much.

Actually since this is the first week and my DS has been really reluctant to start school, I have been fortunate enough to spend like 20-30 mins in his class in the morning and also around 15 mins when I go to pick him up and both those times I have seen the screen on with some cartoon learning thing on and some kids watching them. Also my DS has mentioned a few new things that he said he watched on the screen in his class which were not on when I was there in the class. So I estimated that he must have seen some other videos through the day too. It could be that I am getting paranoid about something trivial, but so far we have tried to live a screen free life at hme and veer him towards books and toys and am worried that he might get too fascinated by this tool in his life

Hmm, my 3 year old is in the preschool room at a private nursery and they use very few screens. They have a tablet in the room that might be used to look up videos about say the life cycle of a butterfly or something if they’re talking about it with the children. I don’t think I’d like it if they were being used very regularly.

As long as it is in Latin I wouldn’t complain too much 😂

Well it sounds crap to me. He should be learning through play. Not telly. Did you find out about the curriculum beforehand?

You say you want to live a screen free life but computers, tablets etc are part of modern day life and come under the ICT part of knowledge and understanding of the world in the early years curriculum. Most nurseries have an interactive whiteboard which is used as an additional tool for learning alongside the teacher. You say it had a cartoon learning thing on, so it was teaching something. There are many wonderful programs to teach number, phonics etc and children learn in different ways so having a cartoon character rather than always a teacher can capture the children's interest. Also in the first week having a short video on for some children to watch may give staff more 1:1 time with others so they can do all the masses of assessments to see each child's starting point. I do not think the staff would be happy a parent complaining about this in their first week. Give it a month and see if your child is happy, surely that is the most important thing.

I know at the end of the day in reception, mine had the TV on, whilst awaiting collection. They didn't in the morning, but then the start time was fixed. Mine have just started an independent school, which has a 30 minute window for dropping off - as people travel, so they have an activity, which if they finish they can then choose what to do, but they are at the older end of prep so not just starting, I imagine a screen with something appropriate would be used for pre-reception, particularly as you say "some", so others are off doing other activities and the bits you are seeing are the "padding" of the day, to help parents have a single pick up time with other classes, not shorter days.

My child is in a preschool room at nursery and they sometimes watch alphablocka or similar for the last 15-20 mins of the day if there are a few children left awaiting collection and they are getting tired to give them something to keep them busy/prevent overtired meltdowns I would imagine. But this is at approaching 5.30pm at the end of the day. The 'routine' of the preschool day finishes at 4.30pm so I consider the last hour purely childcare and therefore don't mind this. Their core hours are 9-4.30 with anything outside of this additional care.

Is the pre-prep 'school' hours only? If so I would expect proper planned activities/structure during the day (normally play based at this age) and wouldn't be happy paying pre-prep prices for the kids to watch screens.

I did know just how much time DD1 spent on screens watching iPlayer in reception... I had a routine where I'd walk the dog, take the dog home and nip back out to do the school pickup and the dog walking route took me past the school grounds (it's the one real "park" route near us unless trudging around pavements is your fun) and I could see in the classroom window - so I knew iPlayer went on by about 2pm in the afternoon and was still going at school pickup at 3.10.

Little bit at the end of the day as a holding activity when they're really small and need lots of organising - fine, but this was piss taking level (we moved away from that school and the reception lead has since left).

State not private, but I've been disappointed with the fact the children watch tv at school too even though I'm happy with the school generally. I mean screen free just isn't going to happen at state in this day and age, but I didn't expect being shown actual tv shows! They didn't at pre school though. Atm I don't allow tv in the week during term time to balance it out a bit. But appreciate you're screen free so that wouldn't help. We were too until 4ish so I wouldn't have appreciated this at pre-school age. They did do some screen based activities though.

Generally they will watch numberbkocks and alphablocks and use screens - they do games on the whiteboard and children come up to solve puzzles and press on the screen, just like getting someone up to write on the blackboard. My DD found it ended up being the SEN kids who got more screen time and she has had less and less during primary. However it ramped up massively during covid as they weren't able to play as much so movies were put on instead when it rained.

I think you have to be careful with fee paying schooling not to be a 'customer'. You either trust the school or you don't. Try and let them get on with it.

I teach older children, but I have my IWB on all day. Every lesson involves watching a 3-4min clip of something- maybe more than once, interactive quizzes, me modelling writing on the board (they are still looking at a screen), looking at teaching slides I have made for them, me annotating excerpts of text on the screen. I reckon they look at the IWB 3 out of the 6hrs they are in school.

That's how teaching is now. We can't afford text books or whole class sets of reading books, so onto the screen it goes.

The obvious answer is to talk to the school.