Is Y4 "boring"?

[SarfEast1cated]

I am puzzled, because my 9yr DD doesn't like her teacher (he is new) and finds school "boring". Her new teacher is an ambitious chap (TeachFirst I believe), who is very orderly in the classroom and doesn't like fun (apparently!). He's a bit of a stickler for neatness and 'behaviour'.
As a Primary PGCE student myself I sympathise with him and imagine that a lot of the issues my DD has with him is because he is trying desperately hard to get through everything, and keep them all on track.
I'm not sure how to broach it with him really, but DD who always used to love school and work really hard feels unappreciated and disliked. I wonder if maybe Y4 is a tricky year - they are older and more confident - always trying to break the odd uniform rule and (I can imagine) less likely to behave beautifully for a sticker.
So what do you think teachers? Is the Y4 curriculum boring? Are the kids hormonal and weird? Can I do anything to fix this?
What do you think?

Quite frankly I think the Primary curriculum, not just year 4, overall is diabolical.

Children are chained to desks and taught to jump through hoops in order to fulfill pointless success criteria with creativity positively forbidden.

It breaks my heart.

My DD found yr 4 to be boring and was utterly miserable. "Writing, writing and more writing". Things have picked up this year, but she has a simply brilliant teacher who tries to make things fun at every point. Not looking forward to yr 6 at all as it will be back to endless drudge and pointless tests.

What I find particularly sad is that my DD loves writing! So it wouldn't really take much to keep her happy. I think her CT is just going a bit overboard on behaviour but it's alienating all of the class.

purple I am in my late 40s so pretty old, but most of the stuff we are teaching in primary I didn't do until secondary school. They seem to do too much, too soon and not in enough depth in my opinion.

Mine does too, but it's just never ending at her school. It's hard on the well-behaved ones when order is being imposed. I truly believe you have to give something of yourself to the children when you teach (nothing over personal, just an inight into your likes and dislikes etc.) and that humour is one of the best ways to get them engaged and eager to learn. It's very hard when you are new to the job though, especially if you have a SMT that don't believe fun had any place in a learning environment. Hope she's happier soon.

Thanks Santa

I teach year 4! I think I could safely say that my class don't think y4 is boring. There's a lot of flexibility. Is it worth asking what makes it boring - the topics, the activities, the work?

It's hard to tell from your post.

Scenario A) He's embracing his inner Kim Jong Un and is a relentless tyrant.

Scenario B) He's inherited a class of children who are used to doing Kung Fu punctuation and running about the building doing crime scene mysteries for maths. They therefore can't use punctuation properly or sit at a desk quietly.

There is a terrible tendency in teaching to make everything fun and sparkly nowadays. There is nothing wrong with working silently. It helps the vast majority of children to learn.

From your OP I don't think you really have grounds to complain about him.

My DD is very well behaved and loves her teacher but moans that all they do is maths. It's so sad. She's very arty and loves reading. Can't remember the last time she came home and said they did anything outside either.

Hi all thanks for your replies. firstly I am not going to complain to the teacher, how the he'll would I put it? Poor man. I'm just trying to make sense of what's going on. Maybe the class are getting a bit teenage and jaded, maybe the work they do in Y4 is just a bit drier. Their previous teacher was very big on building their confidence, so maybe this teacher is negative by comparison.

Year 4 is the Year 9 of primary school.
It might be that behaviour in general in the class is being tricky so everyone is suffering the 'crack down'. Mine are in a horrible phase at the moment. I've had to deal with three serious incidents/friendship problems in the last week. They're all mini-teenagers!

I don't think it's 'boring', but it's less completely new things than Y3, I guess.

Yes Bra I think that's probably it. I think they are also going over what they did in Y3 as well so not much new stuff as you say. Maybe it's also now the age where it's cool to say school is boring. DD does seem to think that the teacher doesn't like them though which is a bit sad.

I know this is meant to be year 4, however my DS has started doing this since moving up to yr3. He says he's bored of all the writing, and that they have do literacy everyday.
He loved school up until junior school too.

I have a dd in year 4 who really isn't enjoying it. She loved year 3 (which was definitely down to the lovely teacher she had!) but has really struggled this year so far. There's no difference academically but she just isn't anywhere near as happy.

I think there are some behavioural issues in the class that the teacher is struggling to deal with (other teachers keep being brought in to shout at the class apparently!) and the teacher is generally quite cold (dd said the other week that she's never seen her teacher smile!!)

There have also been quite a lot of hormones and friendship issues flying around! I can't wait for this year to be over to be honest.