Child being 'punished' for a choice I made

suzuki1_2

As a Scottish Secondary School teacher and as a parent of 2 boys that both went to University I can only say that the education my sons got from Primary School (and Secondary School) was first rate. My recollection is that my sons went up a book only when the teacher thought they should, it didn't depend on the parent signing anything and it had nothing to do with Classroom Assistants either.

tyllwyd

My oldest daughter (now 13) was on a system where you read your way through a set of books. I found the books completely boring, so they ended up getting left in her bag when she read with us at bedtime, so after while her school books and the stage she was actually reading at got completely out of step. After a few years they got round to re-assessing all the children and she jumped up a few levels. It was a relief all round when she became a 'free' reader but even then there were very few books in school she would want to read, so she took in her own reading books.

Four years later, with my second daughter, the books available in the school had improved a lot, but this time round I didn't stress so much about it, and we just did our own thing without paying too much attention to the school books.

I'm lucky because my daughters are both good at English and love reading so I've never had to do much beyond make books available to them. But I can see that it is very easy for kids to get stuck and lose that enthusiasm, and it is a real shame. I help out with reading at secondary school now, and I can see that sitting down one-to-one with them to read makes a big difference - they don't have anyone doing that at home, and will tell you that they don't read at home, not even magazines. It's a real shame, because the kids that I see aren't reaching their potential and they could do so much better if they had that support at home.

fedupnow

Mine went to Primary school in Wales. If I remember rightly, they were allowed to choose their books from a library as and when they wanted to. It worked for us.

I guess they must have been 'assessed' to make sure they were doing okay at intervals. But there again, maybe that's why some slip through to secondary school unable to read.

poet123

My kids all read every single day either to a TA or teacher or to a parent helper, and were expected to read for 10 mins every night supervised by a parent and we had to sign to say they had done so.

Only when we put in the comments box that a book was complete or it happened at school did the book get changed. If they came across any difficult words or words they did not understand the meaning of they had a book which we wrote them in and then they looked them up in a dictionary, from there the teacher used the words from all the class to construct a spelling test for the end of each week.

Savvy_Sue

mumps wrote: »

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.

:rotfl: So very true ...

jem, it may well be a difference between the English and Scottish systems.

Spendless

tyllwyd wrote: »

My oldest daughter (now 13) was on a system where you read your way through a set of books. I found the books completely boring, so they ended up getting left in her bag when she read with us at bedtime, so after while her school books and the stage she was actually reading at got completely out of step.

My son is 12 and exactly the same happened to him. I recall going to parents evening and taking in his school reading book and his home reading book and showing teacher they were poles apart! Teacher refused to budge from his view that DS had to read all age 7 books, then all aged 8 and so on before going onto free reading. I wasn't prepared for DS to be put off reading, so I told him I would supply what books he wanted, and to not worry about getting through the school books. When he moved up a school year and the teacher changed, I fetched the subject up again and she had a totally different view and said she had no problem with whatever DS wished to read.