Day 140
23/09/09 09:53 Filed in: Diary
How is your child being taught in school? Does the theory of the best way of teaching them change from year to year? Has this affected your children's abilities?
Today was a bit of a strange day. It was one of those days where you never seem to get much done, but you are still rushing around like a blue bottomed fly (so polite!).
I had an invitation to attend a school meeting about youngest's reading and how they intend to teach them within school. Its all about Phonics nowadays where teaching reading and writing is based on sounds and blending sounds together. So we were being told how we should sound the start of words and not use traditional methods. Thats all very well but the English language is so complicated half of the words aren't spelt how they sound anyway. Something our eldest daughter is constantly discovering!
Writing is also about using a recursive script. Which involves each letter having a known starting point and a tail. It is so that children should follow naturally with joined up writing. We were forewarned about this prior to youngest starting school. However we didn't pay any attention and just taught her how to write her name with normal letters. Whether this will jeopardise her future writing ability, now that she has to unlearn something again, only time will tell.
How many people still write nowadays anyway, as oppose to type, and of those how many actually use joined up writing? If you have to complete any forms they always ask for block capitals or at least want details 'printed', i.e., they want separate clear letters, not joined up writing. So should schools really be teaching it still? Isn't it more important for children to just write imaginatively and legibly?
I can't recall our eldest daughter writing in joined up writing recently. So have they dropped it from juniors but are still teaching it in infants? Or is my eldest daughter not writing correctly? What do they teach the children to do in senior school?
Our eldest daughter's spelling is not very good, but apparently it is on a par with most of the other children in her class. It appears they have now decided the method of giving the children ten or so words to learn each week, in readiness for a test, doesn't give them the necessary understanding to spell correctly. They rope learn the words for the test and then promptly forget them again when they write their stories.
It seems the more I speak to teachers the more I get the impression our children are being taught by a series of experiments. They try one method of teaching for a term, or year, or even longer and then, when they finally accept it doesn't work, they try something else. I appreciate that life is a series of trying different things until you find something that categorically works but there are two problems I can see. One method of teaching will work for some children but not others, and whilst they are experimenting on these methods, and discovering they fail, our children are struggling to grasp the basics of what they need for later life.
So what is the answer? How should our younger children be taught to give them the platform for their future learning? I only wish I knew the answer to that one. Maybe then I could persuade the government to give me lots of money to put it into practice!
Until then I will attend the school meetings, and nod my head appropriately, but I will teach my children anything I think is beneficial, in whatever way they understand.
I had an invitation to attend a school meeting about youngest's reading and how they intend to teach them within school. Its all about Phonics nowadays where teaching reading and writing is based on sounds and blending sounds together. So we were being told how we should sound the start of words and not use traditional methods. Thats all very well but the English language is so complicated half of the words aren't spelt how they sound anyway. Something our eldest daughter is constantly discovering!
Writing is also about using a recursive script. Which involves each letter having a known starting point and a tail. It is so that children should follow naturally with joined up writing. We were forewarned about this prior to youngest starting school. However we didn't pay any attention and just taught her how to write her name with normal letters. Whether this will jeopardise her future writing ability, now that she has to unlearn something again, only time will tell.
How many people still write nowadays anyway, as oppose to type, and of those how many actually use joined up writing? If you have to complete any forms they always ask for block capitals or at least want details 'printed', i.e., they want separate clear letters, not joined up writing. So should schools really be teaching it still? Isn't it more important for children to just write imaginatively and legibly?
I can't recall our eldest daughter writing in joined up writing recently. So have they dropped it from juniors but are still teaching it in infants? Or is my eldest daughter not writing correctly? What do they teach the children to do in senior school?
Our eldest daughter's spelling is not very good, but apparently it is on a par with most of the other children in her class. It appears they have now decided the method of giving the children ten or so words to learn each week, in readiness for a test, doesn't give them the necessary understanding to spell correctly. They rope learn the words for the test and then promptly forget them again when they write their stories.
It seems the more I speak to teachers the more I get the impression our children are being taught by a series of experiments. They try one method of teaching for a term, or year, or even longer and then, when they finally accept it doesn't work, they try something else. I appreciate that life is a series of trying different things until you find something that categorically works but there are two problems I can see. One method of teaching will work for some children but not others, and whilst they are experimenting on these methods, and discovering they fail, our children are struggling to grasp the basics of what they need for later life.
So what is the answer? How should our younger children be taught to give them the platform for their future learning? I only wish I knew the answer to that one. Maybe then I could persuade the government to give me lots of money to put it into practice!
Until then I will attend the school meetings, and nod my head appropriately, but I will teach my children anything I think is beneficial, in whatever way they understand.
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