Child being 'punished' for a choice I made

jem16

mumps wrote: »

I think it is like my grandson's school, the child gets given a book and someone, teacher, TA or parent, hears the child read and marks the reading card. My grandson frequently has weeks when he doesn't read at school so only moves on to another book if his mother, father or granny (that is me) hears him read and marks his card. He then gets another book.

I have never come across reading being done like this in all my 35 years of teaching.

Parents/grandparents are asked to hear reading at home purely to assist in the practising of reading which has been taught and prepared in class by the class teacher. Teachers will ask that a marker is signed to show that the child has practised their reading at home with an adult. The signing of a marker will have no bearing on whether or not or when a child will progress to the next book.

A Classroom Assistant may hear a child/group read under the guidance of the class teacher but it is the class teacher alone who will decide when the child is ready for the next book. Classroom Assistants are not allowed to make these decisions.

In infant classes, reading would normally be done on at least 3/4 days out of 5. Further up the school, reading will focus more on the various higher order skills and less on hearing reading.

I understand that it was probably annoying when the teacher asked what we thought was going to happen

Yes it's rather difficult to work on prediction skills if you have already read the book.

Another example is my sport mad son, I remember his teacher complaining that when he went to the library he always chose a sporting biography. Well I thought a sporty ten year old was doing well to read a book so I encouraged him. She wasn't happy, made him choose something else which then sat in his school bag unread for a week. That really improved his reading no end.

I wouldn't stop him reading a sports book, but at age 10 he should be widening his knowledge and would also be encouraging him to read a variety of texts.

alwayspuzzled

jem16 wrote: »

I have never come across reading being done like this in all my 35 years of teaching.

Parents/grandparents are asked to hear reading at home purely to assist in the practising of reading which has been taught and prepared in class by the class teacher. Teachers will ask that a marker is signed to show that the child has practised their reading at home with an adult. The signing of a marker will have no bearing on whether or not or when a child will progress to the next book.

A Classroom Assistant may hear a child/group read under the guidance of the class teacher but it is the class teacher alone who will decide when the child is ready for the next book. Classroom Assistants are not allowed to make these decisions.

QUOTE]

In our school dd (y1) does not get a new book unless she's read it at home and had the reading record signed and it is the teaching assistant that hears her read once a week and hands out the new book. This was the same for both ds1&2 now (y9 & y7).

As a now single parent with 4 kids and a full time job, reading with dd doesn't get done as often as as it did with the boys and I feel so guilty that shes not moving up through the books as quickly as she could. Due to a combination of 'issues' she actually hasn't had a new book for 4 weeks now, this week we've managed better and the book was read on several nights and taken in on Thurs (her groups reading day) but no books come home yet - probably sitting in her drawer in the classroom!

balletshoes

in my DD's primary school (she's year 7 now), parents were encouraged to listen to their child read the school reading books at home, and if we felt our child should try another book/another level, we'd put a note to this effect in the reading log, then the teacher/TA would hear the child read and then change the book as appropriate. There was no requirement to read all the books at one level before progressing to the next.

daska

jem16 wrote: »

I have never come across reading being done like this in all my 35 years of teaching.

Parents/grandparents are asked to hear reading at home purely to assist in the practising of reading which has been taught and prepared in class by the class teacher. Teachers will ask that a marker is signed to show that the child has practised their reading at home with an adult. The signing of a marker will have no bearing on whether or not or when a child will progress to the next book.

A Classroom Assistant may hear a child/group read under the guidance of the class teacher but it is the class teacher alone who will decide when the child is ready for the next book. Classroom Assistants are not allowed to make these decisions.

In infant classes, reading would normally be done on at least 3/4 days out of 5. Further up the school, reading will focus more on the various higher order skills and less on hearing reading.



Yes it's rather difficult to work on prediction skills if you have already read the book.



I wouldn't stop him reading a sports book, but at age 10 he should be widening his knowledge and would also be encouraging him to read a variety of texts.

Reading at home in the schools I'm referring to has no influence on children getting a new book and unless parents volunteer to go in and hear children read they can go all week without reading to anyone, let alone a classroom assistant, which leads them to be stuck on the same book week in week out. From what you say I suspect that during your many years in teaching you have not experienced just how dire some school policies can be. You may just have to take it on trust that not all schools even aspire to what you consider normal, let alone achieve it.

Savvy_Sue

jem16 wrote: »

I am sorry that this has happened and should not happen. However I would wonder why your niece would still not read books of her own choosing if she really was interested in reading them?

If school has taught that reading is a process to be worked through rather than something you do for your own enjoyment, I can easily see she'd have been put off.

daska wrote: »

My niece is starting to come out of it now (7), but the process of always having the same reading book for a week because she didn't get read with unless her mum came in to do it and then having to restart a level from the beginning because she didn't get to it by the end of term was soul destroying for her.

Indeed it would be!

mumps wrote: »

I think I was sensitive to this issue as I remember it even at grammar school. I love reading, always have. I would be given the new set book, can't remember many of them now but Silas Marner was one. We read a few pages and for homework had to finish the chapter and possibly reading the next one (going back 40 years here). We had English lessons every day but one day would be Shakespeare and one day would be language and once a week it was set book. I would arrive at the next lesson a week later having read the book and would get told off for finishing the book. I understand that it was probably annoying when the teacher asked what we thought was going to happen and I already knew but I can't read a book like that, if I am enjoying it I keep reading if I am made to read it in chunks I will not enjoy it and read something else.

Me too!

jem16 wrote: »

I wouldn't stop him reading a sports book, but at age 10 he should be widening his knowledge and would also be encouraging him to read a variety of texts.

But surely it's better to encourage reading of some kind rather than insisting that he has a library book in which he has no interest?

daska wrote: »

From what you say I suspect that during your many years in teaching you have not experienced just how dire some school policies can be. You may just have to take it on trust that not all schools even aspire to what you consider normal, let alone achieve it.

Indeed, I am always grateful when I think how my boys were taught, in schools which weren't well regarded, at the right level for them rather than at the lowest common denominator.

And I speak as an early reader, who can still remember the nightmare of the whole class reading Janet and John books aloud. It was so TEDIOUS!

merlot123

mumps wrote: »

I think it is like my grandson's school, the child gets given a book and someone, teacher, TA or parent, hears the child read and marks the reading card. My grandson frequently has weeks when he doesn't read at school so only moves on to another book if his mother, father or granny (that is me) hears him read and marks his card. He then gets another book.

This happened at my childrens primary school, I thought it was an excellent way of hearing children read. All parents were asked if they wanted to volunteer, and most did if they were a SAHP, that way all children were heard reading every three or four days. I used to be a reading mum for 2-3 hours on a Monday every week, every school should adopt this policy.

mumps

merlot123 wrote: »

This happened at my childrens primary school, I thought it was an excellent way of hearing children read. All parents were asked if they wanted to volunteer, and most did if they were a SAHP, that way all children were heard reading every three or four days. I used to be a reading mum for 2-3 hours on a Monday every week, every school should adopt this policy.

My two youngest went to a school that did this but it was not what I was talking about at grandsons school. The parent hearing them read is done at home, if parents don't and they don't manage to read with teacher or TA they will go all week without reading, I am talking about a five year old. I assume they do literacy on the whiteboard or something but their reading books can, and do, stay in their bags all week.

mumps

jem16 wrote: »

I have never come across reading being done like this in all my 35 years of teaching.

In my 40 years as a parent I have never come across reading being done any other way.

Parents/grandparents are asked to hear reading at home purely to assist in the practising of reading which has been taught and prepared in class by the class teacher. Teachers will ask that a marker is signed to show that the child has practised their reading at home with an adult. The signing of a marker will have no bearing on whether or not or when a child will progress to the next book.

This has happened in the three primary schools my children attended and the two primary schools my grandchildren have attended.


A Classroom Assistant may hear a child/group read under the guidance of the class teacher but it is the class teacher alone who will decide when the child is ready for the next book. Classroom Assistants are not allowed to make these decisions.

When my children were at primary school they did not have TAs or Classroom Assistants. When I was learning to read I was in a class of 48 and one teacher managed to teach us.

I was a volunteer at one school, I went in for two hours a week to hear reading. I moved children on to new books, all the parents did. The funny thing was the school never even checked if I could read. From what I could hear from some parents who were "helping" it would have been useful to check this point.

In infant classes, reading would normally be done on at least 3/4 days out of 5. Further up the school, reading will focus more on the various higher order skills and less on hearing reading.

In your school perhaps.


Yes it's rather difficult to work on prediction skills if you have already read the book.

Indeed but how difficult is it to learn a love of reading when forced to stop at page 47 when you are dying to know what happens on page 48? This was a problem when we got a new young teacher, for my first year I had the Head of English, she was wonderful and seemed very ancient (probably about the age I am now) and she didn't care as she knew I was a "reader". She would just ask me to sit quietly through this bit as she knew I would have read the book by then.

I well remember her going round the class and asking to see what books people had brought in for silent reading during exam time (we shared an exam room with an older group and had about half an hour at the end of our exams before they finished so we took books to read.) I was never top of the class, not even top group, but I was reading The Once and Future King, the class swot was reading a James Bond book and was told she should look at what I was reading and aim to read better books at school. She wasn't happy, I can picture her angry face now.

I wouldn't stop him reading a sports book, but at age 10 he should be widening his knowledge and would also be encouraging him to read a variety of texts.

What 10 year old boys should be doing is one thing. You can't make a 10 year old boy read a book he doesn't like. You might be able to sit him down and force him to say the words but that isn't what I mean by reading a book and I think it would have turned him off reading for life.

I see from other people's replies that this method of teaching reading, or variations on it, is not unique to the schools I know.

mumps

alwayspuzzled wrote: »

jem16 wrote: »

I have never come across reading being done like this in all my 35 years of teaching.

Parents/grandparents are asked to hear reading at home purely to assist in the practising of reading which has been taught and prepared in class by the class teacher. Teachers will ask that a marker is signed to show that the child has practised their reading at home with an adult. The signing of a marker will have no bearing on whether or not or when a child will progress to the next book.

A Classroom Assistant may hear a child/group read under the guidance of the class teacher but it is the class teacher alone who will decide when the child is ready for the next book. Classroom Assistants are not allowed to make these decisions.

QUOTE]

In our school dd (y1) does not get a new book unless she's read it at home and had the reading record signed and it is the teaching assistant that hears her read once a week and hands out the new book. This was the same for both ds1&2 now (y9 & y7).

As a now single parent with 4 kids and a full time job, reading with dd doesn't get done as often as as it did with the boys and I feel so guilty that shes not moving up through the books as quickly as she could. Due to a combination of 'issues' she actually hasn't had a new book for 4 weeks now, this week we've managed better and the book was read on several nights and taken in on Thurs (her groups reading day) but no books come home yet - probably sitting in her drawer in the classroom!

It is hard isn't it. That is why I try to hear my grandson read on the days I pick him up from school. By the time his single mum gets home reading isn't always top of the list and he is tired. Just a thought, might the older ones help out? Even the year 9 hearing her read one night a week would help. Being on the same book for 4 weeks is soul destroying.

jem16

mumps wrote: »

I see from other people's replies that this method of teaching reading, or variations on it, is not unique to the schools I know.

Any Scottish parents out there care to comment?

None of the schools I have taught in nor been a parent of have gone about the teaching of reading in this way. Perhaps I have been lucky or it is the difference in our Education systems.