What is golden time actually for?

[theITgirl]

Pondering this today. The ideas I have come up with so far.

1. The children are so knackered by Friday afternoon that there is no point trying to teach them (not a dig, DS is actually very tired)
2. So they have a punishment (ie you have lost 5 mins of your golden time), but actually this is probably a useful byproduct of the real reason.
3. Teacher gets to observe social interaction - actually this is maybe the official reason.

Any teachers out there who can tell me the real reason.

Golden time idea sounds wonderful - if they had 4 and a half days of class teaching with their designated and qualified class teacher. I would be all for it, if they stopped the frequent afternoons with no qualified teacher in the classroom, endless supply teachers covering endless courses and illnesses, whole weeks of cover teachers as the teachers visit other schools abroad - every year.. Celia2, I think the change of attitude towards education could be partly due to the frustration of lack of continued contact time already. The thought of it increasing makes me despair. Perhaps my local school is unusual and a bit extreme. DD2 only saw her class teacher on Mon and Weds morning this week. All the rest was TA and/over supply teacher. Next week DD1?s class teacher is off abroad somewhere in Scandinavia..

It is a good time to work out if a DC is having problems with making friendships and then being able to try and help them. Having some undirected time is very valuable in lots of ways, that are not always immediately obvious.

lol ellingwoman - yes it is. Believe me, I can't see many of the little girls there dutifully tidying up after the boys

Hulababy - what you describe sounds good and is what DS1 and DS2 now get at their new Prep. They don't call it Golden Time but it works well. I also find the teaching staff working incredibly hard at their new school compared to the old one - indeed I feel they work too hard when I see them still in school at 5.00 pm. They do not have a TA either in each class.

elingwoman - I think the boys used to tidy up with the girls but DS2 never got the hang of it and still is physiclaly incapable of tidy anything at all even at age 6. I just get the feeling he might be a traditional man despite me and my wife trying hard to train him

Can anyone explain the difference betwen golden time and moot? My son leaves his day at the school gate so I never get to find out what hes getting up to. Am i right in saying moot is independent play?

My SIL regards her DCs Golden Time as an opportunity for her to take them out of school for early starts on holoidays and weekends away as "they don't do anything on a Friday afternoon anyway". I have other issues wth her anyway, but this one really annoys me for some reason. None of my DC have ever had Golden Time - it's a relatively recent thing isn't it?

Our golden time is actually very well thought out we have loads of clubs throughout the school run by the teachers that all the children from years 3 to 6 can choose so there is a mix of ages in each club. ( clubs such as sports, school newspaper, recorders, percussion, glass painting, various crafts, construction, board games etc.)

It is thought of as curriculum enrichment and as a reward for pupils who work hard and behave well.

Each half term the children choose another club. It runs for 40 mins on a Friday afternoon. Certainly not an opportunity for the teachers to sit back and relax and very worthwhile IMHO.

I'd never heard of this before. Just asked Ds and he told me what it is, but says he's never had it at all and he's in year 6.
He says it's a play time, thinking time, not a time for work etc during Reception, yr1 and yr2.

Is it remotely possible that it it is supposed to be fun?

One of the year 5 teachers in our school used to bring her lovely wonderful dog into school on Friday afternoons for her class to play with if they had been good all week. They looked forward to it so much and so did the dog. Their "golden" time was called "Bracken time". Children used to look forward so much to being in her class and achieved so well there. Then someone complained to the LEA about it and it had to be stopped. I'm still sad about that

My children had this in both the UK and the US. In England it was just one of the many rewards and sanctions available, and I agree with piscesmoon, seems to be an effective one (with my two dd appreciated it, and liked it very much if someone she thought "naughty" missed a bit of it, whilst with ds he seemed to think it a fair sanction for messing around to miss a few minutes of his time). In the US it seemed more a reward for working incredibly hard (quite a high pressure school with very little break time) and made dd feel more positive towards her teacher. There were also sweets involved

I don't think they do it in Canada where we are now, but then school seems so relaxed perhaps they don't have to. ds had to miss a playtime as a sanction the other day and was very miserable (he finds it very hard to sit still and needs to tear around a bit) I think he would have preferred a golden time sanction.

(From the perspective of when I was a pupil)
I remember golden time very fondly. Like Smartiejake, my school had a range of clubs to choose from between the years of 3 and 6. The clubs included: gardening, papier mache, cooking, parachute games, tennis and the most popular club of all - visiting the local old people's home. The school was in a quite a working class area where most parents would be unable to afford to send their children to extra activities. The clubs allowed for new friendships to develop between the year groups and for new skills to be learnt. We also got to spend quality time with different teachers throughout the school, making the school feel very homely.
For years after I left primary school I continued to visit the new friends I had made at the old peoples home. It was fantastic as my grandparents lived in another country and they either didn't have grandchildren or didn't have regular contact with their grandchildren.