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Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

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Original poster

sodding barnaby bear ....

8 replies

mimsum · 08/12/2008 19:23

getting ready for bed tonight, DD (Y1) said "I must get Barnaby Bear this week, I've been extra specially good today and I'm going to be extra specially good all week" and then her face fell and she added "but I'm good all the time and Barnaby Bear always goes to the ones who mostly aren't so good ..."

now I understand that some of the children need extra incentives to behave (ds1 was one of them) but the children are told they have to be well-behaved and work hard in order to get BB - DD is ALWAYS impeccably behaved according to her teacher and ALWAYS puts 100% into everything she does at school - what on earth does she have to do to be picked?? OK so virtue is its own reward but that's a pretty hard concept to grasp when you're only just 6

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constancereader · 08/12/2008 19:28

The bear will probably go to each child at some point, I used to tick each child off a list. Her turn will come.

spudmasher · 08/12/2008 19:30

There is probably no rhyme or reason behind who gets Barnaby. The teacher will most likely be working her way through the class list, albeit not in order. Equal opps.
You can try and explain it to her but very hard. My DD claimed EVERYONE else was picked TWICE to be penguin of the day (!) before she even had her first go........

kittybrown · 08/12/2008 19:49

Constance you're better than my dd's old teacher! She told her she could have Barnaby when we went to York. Later on in the day she found out another girl was going to New York for her holiday so sent him there instead she couldn't work out why my dd was so upset.
By the end of the year dd realised how dapsy the the teacher was and claimed the prize for the most stars even though she'd hardly got any. A badly behaved girl had got them all but had started to stick them on dd's line. I was stunned that she even got away with it. The teacher had no idea. Dd reasoned that she deseved it as she always behaved but never got a sticker while the other girl got a sticker for not hitting anyone at playtime.

infin · 08/12/2008 19:49

Yes...there will almost certainly be a list and eventually every child will get a turn. Where I work we are now in the 12th week of term so I would guess that 11 children max would have had Barnaby so far...up to 19 who haven't. It is hard for children who are always good...and I expect there are lots of children who behave beautifully, just like your daughter. Hang on in there!!!

MrsWeasleyStrokesSantasSack · 08/12/2008 19:54

if its upsetting your DD have a word with her teacher.

Our infants school do "good Behaviour" awards for lunch time and DS was/is the best behaved child in the world but never got one of these awards and when I casually mentioned it to the teacher she admitted that they give them to children who misbehaviour then start to behaviour. I asked if that was fair and they then changed the way they did them.

christywhisty · 08/12/2008 20:40

I had to have a word with DS's teacher in reception in the summer term , when some dcs had taken home the bear more than once and ds still hadn't taken it home. Never any issues on his behaviour in fact always really good.
Same happened in cubs with Hissing Sid

feelbetter · 08/12/2008 23:34

I think it's annoying when you as an adult know there's a list, or whatever, yet the school/teacher is telling the children something different.
Thus an essentially random treat becomes caught up in a whole soft-discipline/positive reinforcements thing. Except that it isn't truly working as positive reinforcement, because you know it's random.
Although I am not the parent to tell my dcs there is no Santa, I must confess, I finally had enough one day and explained the deal to my ds. In my defence he was unusually mature.
I put it on a par with knowing the secret of "pass the parcel". I also explained that he shouldn't use the information to cause trouble in class. He didn't.
I told him because he had noticed that the particular "reward" system in his class wasn't operating logically and he expressed his intention to stop any form of "trying" at all.
Sigh.

Original poster

mimsum · 09/12/2008 12:24

feelbetter I think that's it - obviously I know all the kids in the class have got to have a go, and with 29 of them that means some will have a long wait - but it's the idea the kids have got that good behaviour = barnaby bear but it then means that DD can't understand what she needs to do to get the reward as it's patently obvious to her that her behaviour's much better than the children who are getting it - she's also never been "Playground star of the week" that seems to be reserved for kids who manage not to hit one week

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