Should I say something?

[RosaLuxembourg]

OK DD1, Year 6, is considered G&T at school and is pulled out of class a couple of times a week for extra literacy sessions with the rest of the G&T cohort. Trouble is, she is finding them immensely dull and frustrating. This week she said she was pulled out of an interesting literacy lesson in class to go and do 'colouring in' and she is absolutely fuming about it.
When I queried this she explained that the in the previous literacy session they had had to write a poem - which she rolled her eyes about because apparently it was - now write a poem about cats and here is a poem you can use to model it - which was not exactly her idea of creativity (or mine either I have to say). Because she had finished her poem she was told to spend the next lesson colouring in a border around the page.
Question is, should I raise this with the class teacher (not the person delivering the sessions) or just let it go?

[Bink]

Why not with the session-deliverer? (Or, better, with whoever it is who co-ordinates the sessions & so is in charge of the theory of them?) It may be they would rather like parental involvement in extension planning, as currently the sound of barrel-scraping is clear.

It should be possible I think to discuss things generally, in a policy way, rather than the cat poem debacle which is best left behind. (Do you think it might have been one of those template poems that are then sent off to a vanity press for parent-fleecing purposes?)

[RosaLuxembourg]

Thing is, I don't think it would be correct etiquette to raise it with the session deliverer because we have never been formally informed that she is ON the G&T register or that these sessions are happening, so I think I ought to go through the class teacher as the gatekeeper, as it were. (I know these are G&T sessions as she has seen a list headed G&T with her name on it, and asked me what it meant.)
This isn't the first time she has complained, she has been banging on about it for ages, but I thought she was just being bolshy because she was missing art or PE or whatever. Today, however, she was called to her session and then sent back to class because the others were still working on their poems and she had finished everything including her colouring in So she was pleased about that.
I don't want to go in all guns blazing, but I would like to get a feeling for what all this is supposed to be achieving.

[Bink]

Ah right. Bizarrely cloak-and-dagger, isn't it?

Then, yes, indeed it should be class teacher, but the discussion should still be policy-focussed (ie, as opposed to cat-poetry-based) - partly because class teacher may have no idea at all of what the extension syllabus is. So actually it might be an idea to ask what the objectives (good classroom word, objective) of the extension sessions are, and does she have any input into them, and does she see any of the outcomes, and what's her general view, and is it all helping your dd do herself justice, etc. ... I'd also drop in something about how your dd is finding her literacy sessions so much more interesting.

[RosaLuxembourg]

Excellent advice, Bink. I know these sessions are a bit of a new departure, and, you know, I think if I were the teacher, I would want to KNOW if a pupil who was receiving them was finding them incredibly boring and frustrating considering they were supposed to be STRETCHING them. So, in theory, by raising my concerns, I am in the way of doing them a favour really, yes?

[Bink]

Especially if the message were deftly tinged with flattery re her whole-class teaching. Oh - on that - how about you find out from your dd exactly how her class teacher's approach holds her interest & so differs from the session-deliverer's? As tangible things like that will be genuinely useful.

All the best!

[tobytortoise]

What is wrong with writing a poem about cats? Why is she rolling her eyes? How are the other children in the group responding? If it is a G&T group why are the others taking much longer to write their actual poems?

[RosaLuxembourg]

The poems wasn't actually about cats - I just used that as an example to preserve a little anonymity. She was rolling her eyes because she was annoyed about the prescriptive nature of the task - they were given the topic and then given a prewritten poem about the subject to use as a model to copy. She found this both limiting and patronising. She says the other children in the group feel the same way as her. I don't know why she finished first. Maybe she was disengaged and did really sloppy work. Maybe she wrote a brilliant poem really quickly. Who knows? The point is she is unhappy in these sessions and I wanted to get some more info from the teacher to find out why.

[gracemargaret]

I understand your frustrations. My dd has a teacher in once a week to do extension work with her and luckily this teacher is fantastic and very creative/inspiring however the problem we have is that main school "literacy" classes are very simslar to what you have described i.e "Today class we are going to write a poem - this will be the subject, here is a list of ways you might start your sentences, another list of rhyming words, and a list of punctuation and where to use it". Half an hour later 16 almost identical poems are produced, all boxes are ticked and very little creativity has been used. I don't know why it happens (maybe because of obsessions with league tables/targets), but I think this spoon fed learning is a real shame. Maybe your daughter could have some input in these sessions - perhaps bring in a story she has started at home to finish or maybe, if confident enough, she could suggest something else she might like to do that is different - which might then help the rest of the group too. We have found with our dd that, as long as she accepts when this is not possible, school have generally been pretty good about letting her get on with her own thing.

I just wonder whether if you can get your child to articulate this for herself it might be more likely to be perceived as enthusiasm rather than (wrongly) as parental interference/criticism.

Wishing you well with it!

[twentypence]

In my class music lessons I am very prescriptive about the initial task. I will say you can only compose 8 beats and you must use this pentatonic scale and you can only use crotchets, quavers and minims. The more musically minded ones find this really frustrating, but I explain to them that at the end of the session we will put all the compositions together and that if they go off on their own tangent then the music will not all fit.

I have also played them lots of music composed around very tight rules so that they can see that famous composers often enforce rules upon themselves but still produce music that is amazing and couldn't be composed by everyone using the rules.

I am getting them to understand the history of music and music theory through their compositions.

Would the same be true of the poetry as described?

I am not a big fan of forcing children to colour in either (although I did get them to do it for 10 minutes last week with a substitute teacher but in my defence I was playing for the Prime Minister)

[MrsJohnCusack]

lololol 20p
you had to get that in didn't you

[MrsJohnCusack]

sorry Rosa

[MrsJohnCusack]

sorry Rosa

[RosaLuxembourg]

So bad you apologised twice, Mrs JC
Once would have been more than sufficient.

[gracemargaret]

I take your point 20p although I do think it is a shame that children are not being taught to seek this knowledge for themselves. I understand the need to teach the "rules" surrounding some forms of poetry but why can they not choose their own poems to use as a model and compose their own list of openers/rhyming words using books/internet as a resource. They would then be learning "how" as well as "what" to learn and would have an increased ownership (and therefore pride) in their "individual" work. I do sometimes think lessons are designed to get the boxes ticked (all kids produce work of an equally reasonable standard) with the minimum hassle (i.e. we all do the same thing and no one leaves the table). Having said all that, overall am v happy with dds school as they put a lot of focus on stretching kids in non academic ways as well which I think is important.

[twentypence]

I sat through 20 poems by 11-13 year olds at ds's school last term. They were about poverty in Bangladesh. The boys just had a list of words plucked from a thesarus, the girls had all modelled themselves on Wilfred Owen. It was fairly dire actually and really not fit to be called poetry which implies individual creativity.

I am careful to call all pieces in this manner - "created in the style of x" or "inspired by x". They are technical compositions in the manner of harmonising a Bach Choral.

But I do wonder if children could learn the technical angle of poetry by reading and thinking about it (and leave writing poetry as a different skill) as they can all read, whereas not all my music class can read music or play an instrument and so in order to get performances I do have to approach in this way.