Lunchtime detention - no lunch

[christywhisty]

DS Yr8 has problems with languages, is on SEN register for Dyslexia/spld problems. He is also top set so a lot expected of him.
Last year French was a problem, but he had a lovely German teacher who really helped him.

Unfortunately lovely german teacher left and his new one seems to be having a few problems with the class.

DS came home with a detention slip for homework not done which seems to date back to the first week of term 6 weeks ago. He turned up for detention at 12.35 which is beginning of lunch Friday (rest of the week it is 12.50). Teacher didn't turn up until 12.50 then kept them there until 1.20 leaving them only 10 minutes to get lunch. I had no problem with the detention, but I do have a problem with him not given time for lunch. He also missed a club he really wanted to go to, so Has taught a lesson.

Today he came home with another detention for tomorrow, again for homework from the beginning of term. I was speaking to another mother about the class and she mentioned that the homework was from a long time ago, so it's not just ds stringing me on.
DS usually does his homework (with a little nagging from me and a little moan from him but it is always of a high quality in every other subject.

Is it acceptable for a child to miss lunch for detention ?

Is it acceptable for detention to be longer than it was meant to be?

and is it acceptable for detentions to be doled out 6 weeks afterwards?
I was happy to go along with the first detention, but i don't feel 2nd detention is that fair.

It's not acceptable to miss lunch. Can't they get a sandwich from the canteen or something. Presumably the teacher also eats, so maybe he thinks your ds has time to grab something.
Why didn't he do the homework BTW. Only asking as you have mentioned the dyslexia as being an issue. Also have a dyslexic child.

In most schools I have been in, detentions have always taken place after a reasonable time to get lunch. The idea is to miss social time, which would include clubs.

I don't think the school needs your permission for lunchtime school detentions. If you want to help your son, help him with his organisation - listen to his concerns and feelings. Don't undermine or try to micromanage the school's discipline policy. You will do no one any favours.

And remember that there are always two sides to every story.

The teacher needs to be a damn sight quicker with handing out the detentions imo, and I always told those who were coming for lunchtime detention to get a sandwich first and then come to me; but they were given a time by which they HAD to be there.

If it was a quick bollocking for stupidity in the lesson, then the detention was that day and I wanted them to me first to be told that they were pains, and then they could go to lunch.

There seems to have been some confusion over the homework, as I said it was at the beginning of term so over 6 weeks ago and from what I can gather there were quite a few others involved so not just DS.

My concerns are that he missed lunch, not that he missed the club. I am sure he learnt a lesson about the importance of homework.

I have always been very supportive with his home work and sat with him to help with German/French.He has an excellent record so the fact this hasn't been done it is out of character.

At Ds's school detentions start at beginning of lunch and he would have had 25 minutes to get lunch afterwards.
Even the form today she put that the detention was to start at 12.00! and finish 1.20 , lunch today starts at 12.50.

What I meant was she shouldn't be handing out detentions now for homework at the start of term - too late now.

She needs to ensure that the kids can eat - I allowed them 15 minutes to get a sandwich before detention; or if it was the swift bollocking scenario, they were let go after I had manked at them for 5 minutes.

I'd talk to the HoY about this or the form tutor to get it sorted, and for either of them to explain his SEN as well.

I'm the same as you - if ds misses a club - tough shit, it'll make the lesson sink in - missing food is not on.

Turns out this is indicative of a much bigger problem and there has been a lot of complaints from the dc's and parents to the head of MFL about this teacher. She can't control the class, maybe bringing up old homework is her way of stamping authority.
I have emailed her and form teacher anyway but she has not replied.

She can't control the class ........in my 14 years of teaching, I would say some classes are very very difficult, and it is not always a case of a teacher can't control a class, usually it is the class that are the problem...Usually, not always, but usually.

Perhaps they are the class from hell?

Certainly not the class from hell, in fact they are the complete opposite! There has never been any behaviour problems in this class at all for any other teachers. It's the dc's that are complaining!To be honest the school does not have many behaviour issues at all.
I have met her once and she seemed very young, so she just be very inexperienced.

If the teacher is very young, she needs to be supported and encouraged - not continually undermined.

Tbh this sounds like a young, inexperienced teacher struggling to assert discipline and to look a bit "teacher-ish". Honmework detentions are only really effective if they happen the week that H/W is not handed in. They should not be missing lunch to do detentions.

I'd keep your eye on things and if it happens again, contact the Head of Year or Head of Department (not the teacher) over these specific issues, rather than bringing all the "can't control the class" issues into it.

That way, the HOY or HoD have specific areas to discuss with the teacher, without it sounding like she's just being criticised for everything.

Hopefully, things will settle as she gets to know the class better.

Half a term is a long time to punish a missing homework. I would imagine the scenario is something like the pupil did not do his homework the first time, and the teacher didn't spot it until after she had taken in the books and marked them. She would have tackled the pupil who has some kind of creative excuse, and gave him the benefit of the doubt. More time passes...another excuse...detention!

I would not use a detention as the first line of sanction. I would, depending on the usual diligence of the child, give a new deadline (eg by lunchtime tomorrow). Then I would deduct housepoints and write in the diary, and only after that would I issue a detention.

If circumstances caused me to turn up late for a detention, I would just carry on the the initial finish time. I would not insist on the full half-hour. I don't like to be punished either. Detentions are usually to inconvenience the child (and parent if after school), so just getting them to turn up is often enough.

Too long, marking needs to be much quicker, but parents should check homework all the time. Most of the negative ponts of this job are caused by chasing up pupils who do not do homework. Do parents ever check, or just moan about teachers?

When a pupil is in detention - I also do not have lunch and miss any opportunity to do any work.

I'm a teacher and a parent, so I do check homework and tick it off in his planner. Having said that, I note that many of my ds's exercise books have not been marked from the start of term, and I will be having words at report evening next month if this is not addressed.

I do both, check and moan; and I always made sure that one of my sixth formers would go and get me lunch when I was doing detentions.

Update - I am really peeved off with this now

I emailed the teacher, explained he was struggling and asked why he was kept in for the first detention.
She replied apologised for keeping him in and never really explained why the other homework was from 6 weeks, just said it was important for him to do it over half term.

I found the offending bit of homework which he had half done, we sat down together and I spent over an hour helping him do the rest of it. She was happy with that.

Today he 0 in a writing test. She said he had no excuse because he can do his homework well!

He only does his homework well for german if I am sitting doing it with him and he is an intelligent boy and can use examples to work out what he is supposed to do ie on the homework he had to insert some missing words on a piece about holidays, then write his own piece on a holiday. He just copied the example changing a few words. ie changing "on Monday it was sunny", to "On Tuesday it was cloudy" etc, that doesn't mean he can write it from scratch in a test.
For everything else except MFL he puts in 110% effort and does really well, but sadly I think they have lost him in languages. He wasn't happy last year but his German teacher was really good with him and encouraged him, French he wasn't so happy with, now he really dislikes both

It is so hard in MFL with children who are struggling with literacy in English.

We have a specialist SEN teacher who teachers (mostly verbal) French to a small class of yr7 and yr8. It's great and they all love it and learn a bit, so that proves it can work, and there's no excuse for saying children with dyslexia shouldn't do MFL, or whatever. (These are children who are 4+ years behind in literacy in English).

But the children on the 'next level up' - i.e. 1-3 years behind in literacy are in mainstream classes and often really struggling. IME they often cope OK for the first year, even enjoy it, but really struggle as things progress, especially if classes remain large with a wide variety of ability.

I'm a linguist myself and am passionate about languages and MFL teaching. But at the moment we seem to be doing it badly in this country: in primary and secondary. All we are succeeding in doing with many children is putting them off languages

Christywhisty - what are the setting arrangements for MFL in your son's school? What did he achieve at KS2 for English?

Hi Roisin

They are set for english, maths and then all other subjects together.
For english and maths he is in the 2nd class and for all the rest he is in the top class.
At KS2 he scraped a 4 by just one mark in writing, that was after years of extra help, his reading mark was a 5b, science was a 5a.
Although a 4 is what is expected it is a long way behind the rest of him. Spelling was 2 years behind. He is on the special needs register in both primary and secondary.

He has now told me he got 8 out 10 for the listening test he did at the same time as the 0 which was for writing. He said his teacher will allow him to do a retest for the writing on Wednesday.

For every other subjects he does really well, he does most of his homework on pc which helps a lot with the spelling problems.

Last year for MFL's he was expected to get level 4s he got 3's for German and a Level4 listening French and level 2 for writing.

There are expecting him to operate at top set levels and speeds, whereas he could probably cope okay in the middle band for MFL.

Also I don't really think he should be doing 2 languages. I think that should be something they should opt into when they are older.

He sounds like he's doing really well considering the difficulties he has with his dyslexia and spelling.

Do you know any 'spelling' techniques that you could use for MFL too? My ds1 is just learning German and we have words and phrases stuck up all over the house, which helps.

German does have fairly predictable spelling, so if you get the phonics straight, there is usually just one way of spelling any particular sound. So
'sh...' is sch as in Schule, Schuhe, Schoen, ..

Do you think it was spelling errors in the test rather than just not remembering the vocab? (Our yr8 MFL 'writing' tests do get marked very tightly on spelling.)

If he is trying to learn the spelling of a word there are various techniques you can try.

You can write out the word, then draw round the shape ... so you get a blobby shape with up bits and down bits, then colour in this shape and try and visualise it in your head and remember it.

Magic spelling: Write the word correctly, then close your eyes and visualise it in your head. Picture it in a particular way; so it might be tall purple letters with yellow spots on. If there are tricky bits within the word, design little icons to emphasize these words. If it helps you can draw these pictures too.

Have you come across mindmaps in general and this by Tony Buzan Again it has some interesting techniques that may be of some help.

Thanks Roisin for all your ideas and the Tony Buzan tape looks good.
I don't think the spelling is the problem in german. He is quite good where there are rules involved.
He resat the test today in his lunch hour. Apparently the reason he got 0 the last time was because he had to match sentences with pictures and he did, but didn't write the sentence out just whether it was sentence A, B etc so although he got them all right he didn't get any marks for it.
The second part of the test was putting the words of a sentence in the right order, which he said he couldn't do.

From what I can gather he did adequately today.