Friendly names to call kids who make a stupid mistake

[noblegiraffe]

You know, the ones you have a good relationship with, not talking about berating some sensitive y7.

What, in mock exasperation, would you call a pupil who had e.g got a fiendishly difficult differential equation question wrong and you'd just spotted it was because they'd written 1x1=2?

Less personal doesn't automatically mean better. Calling a kid a banana in a jovial voice is surely far less upsetting than fixing the kid with a steely glare and coldly saying 'that was a stupid mistake, wasn't it', even though one is aimed at the kid and one is describing the mistake.

I wonder how comfortable some of the name calling teachers on here would feel, if the Head popped in to the staff room to inform them, in front of their colleagues, that they had made a mistake with their end of year reports and were a silly plonker for making such a simple error?

Said, of course in a light-hearted way to foster friendly and humorous working relationships.

Sadonions you see no difference between

"you're a fucking idiot"

And

Pupil: I can't do this is too hard.

Teacher: Yes you can. Look you did it yesterday (turns pages to show) and the day before. Just the numbers are different.

Pupil: Oh yeah!

Teacher: Silly sausage

Big grins all round

Really

Silver I'd be absolutely fine with that senario.

MyRain that is obviously true for you but the total opposite is needed for my ds. In all truthfulness myself too.

Deputy head often calls us daft names. Like the kids I teach I find it funny.

I've always been a bit dubious about the distinction between labelling the behaviour and labelling the person. IME of MN adults certainly rarely notice the distinction. I would not want to be reprimanded in front of the rest of the staff room, and would not do that to a member of staff. However, correcting mistakes made by children is done in class. It's pretty integral to the job.

I can well imagine the head calling staff doofus in DC's school. Come to that, I believe DS may have said something remarkably along those lines to his maths teacher when they were doing practice papers and she had misread a question

Noblegiraffe - I get that you don't want to be wrong on the Internet, you plonker(!) but that point you made was so obvious.

I compared calling someone a "muppet" with saying they had a mild case of "muppetitis" (with the latter being less personal)

The equivalent would be comparing calling someone a "banana" with saying they had a mild case of "banana-itis" (with the latter being less personal)

I have not said that all comments about work are less harmful than comments about pupils because they are less personal.

Soapboxqueen are you seriously saying that your DS would do worse in school if his teacher made lighthearted, jovial comments about his errors rather than about him? It's specifically the comments being about him that helps him? Or is it the general tone and lightheartedness that helps him?

You can do humour without making it personal.

I know that my experience is unique to me but it's so easy to make fun, jovial classroom environments where every pupil is emotionally safe. Why take the risk of upsetting a pupil when it's totally unnecessary?

The problem I have is that the second you call someone a name - no matter how friendly and gentle and humourless the intention is - you open the doors for other pupils to do the same.

If I'd been called a muppet by a teacher at school I'd have been crucified by the other kids

youaremyrain not in your particular case but people on the thread have been making a more general point about describing the mistake being preferable to describing the child.
I shouldn't have quoted your post because it was a more general point, but it was your post that prompted mine.

Yes Frusso saying "silly sausage" is not needed at all, a smile is all that's needed

Round and round and round we go....

Yes my ds needs people to reduce his stress by saying things like silly sausage etc He knows then that they are joking around with him and are not mad or cross.

Quite honestly I think it is far harsher to say somebody made a silly mistake or just a mistake rather than they are a silly sausage.

And yes it is necessary to add the silly sausage to the end. The fact that some don't see why it is necessary speaks volumes. It isn't there by accident.

Frusso I couldn't read that situation as a child without the silly sausage. I'd assume they thought I was stupid for not realising my mistake.

Crikey, well I'm absolutely not qualified to post but fuck it!
I taught for 10 years a very vulnerable group of people , skills, life skills, therapy skills and so on. Young people , people with the worst self esteem , perfectionism issues, isolated , wary a number of problems you get the picture.
I absolutely always used humour at myself and at them , eg 'the next person to forget x gets to watch me lose the plot entirely!' ' 'right which spanner did not do the homework this week?!' Etc etc I never had people dropping out, avoiding groups or 1-1 work . And my experience taught me that it is not what your teaching that gets the info in its how you teach it. I think I was good at what I did because I modelled for them that mistakes are ok, laughing at yourself is ok, banter is ok etc . This was what I was there to teach them And actually it's not arrogance to think you know your audience it's training and experience it was my job to know so I did.
Judged correctly it's a brilliant teaching tool . It's really sad if it's been used incorrectly to some people in the past but it shouldn't make it a blanket no.

Silly sausage is an affectionate term. Kids like to be liked.

Tomorrow I think I am going to adopt the lecture style lesson. Give information, set work and not have the need to interact with any student at all. I won't be accused of being over familiar or belittling or calling everyone a 'star'. Win, win as far as I can see. Oh and for those of you who have RTT I did my quiz with year 11s today, I didn't need to call anyone a 'douchebag' another student did it for me .

cbigs exactly

Dime Bar?

Maybe the problem is that the same terms mean or stir different feelings for some of the posters here (and of course the children).

For me "silly sausage" is also an affectionate term, like noblegiraffe said.

I only learned it from DS when he was 2 years old, and the way he used it, and the way the term made its way into our house was such that it always makes me smile and I associate it with something silly and light hearted. The same happens with the word "silly".

And to give an example, in our home we made it a rule to only speak in the minority language which is not English. But when DH (who is English but speaks our other language fluently) tried to use the equivalent word to silly in my language I completely rejected it because it did not sound right, it was like an insult, a name calling putting down word, and there was no right word to use that would have the same effect as silly or silly sausage (which sounds more like a kiddy word). So when needed, I borrow it from English, because it has an affectionate connotation to me.

my ds is in nursery and his teacher calls them dozy dates, i dont mind, its usually when they forget something like washing hands properly etc

To some children no there isn't. To some children silly means stupid, therefore is insulting.

In fact I've seen exactly that senerio

teacher oh look what we did yesterday we added 2 plus 5 what was it?
Child A with diagnosed memory issues yes
Teacher what was the answer?
child B (child As best friend) you were good at maths yesterday you helped me.
Child A 7
Teacher so it's the same numbers what is 5 plus 2
Child A I don't know
Child B I think it's 7
Teacher yes it is writing both sums down so both children can see that their the same number,
Child A oh yes five and two
Teacher B that's right being a bit of silly sausage
Child A I'm not silly I can count to 50
Teacher realising what she'd done oh your very good at counting
Child A I'm not silly
Teacher no your not
Child A I'm not silly getting increasingly upset
Teacher no your not would you like Miss onions to help you.
Child A miss onions can me and child B do our maths work in the quiet room
Me yes (spends the whole 30 minutes left reassuring child A she's not silly) both teacher and I think issue is resolved teacher spends lunch time in the staff room agonising over her mistake, realising language wasn't ok. Tells SENco who is very reassuring lunch supervisor reports that child A and B have happily eaten lunch and are very proud of their maths work. Great we all think.

Next morning see child As mother on the bus without prompting, thanks for yesterday I hear child A got upset in maths.
Me oh it was a mistake Mrs Teacher didn't mean to upset her, hope they were friends again this morning.
Parent of child A yeah they were, I think child A has forgotten,

Walk in to school at my start time for the day walk past the reception parent of child B talking to the receptionist.
Parent B miss naught did teacher call child A silly yesterday?
Me well silly sausage not. Actually silly.
Parent B to both me and receptionist well child B kept saying Mrs teacher thinks their all silly and got quite upset about it last night.
Me well I'm back in the class later I'll see how they both are.
Parent B thank you I just thought you should all know children don't always know what you mean.

So no to those children no there's no difference!

How old are those children naught?

Not the same as my silly sausage incident.

One on one marking past paper with 18year old a level chemistry student.
Horrible question on reaction mechanisms she's got entirely right (11 marks). Follow on question for 1 mark says "give the reagent for the conversion of ethene to ethanol". She has written "steak" instead of "steam". Me-"you silly sausage you've written that you make alcohol using steak". Her-no response because she is crying with laughter. Me-also incapable of speech. Once normal service is resumed-me : don't let silly mistakes drag you down from a A* to an A, followed by story of me having written something really daft once.

What other response to someone writing "steak" is there apart from "you nana"? She knows how clever I think she is. She also knows the best thing to do with silly mistakes is laugh at them and correct them...hopefully before the end of the exam. You pick your audience and silly sausage is a fun term of endearment. My French teacher used to call me a cauliflower when I got things wrong.