Concerns with Junior Infants Class

Florence1

My daughter started school in September in a class of 30. I have various concerns which I really some of you with more experience of the education system can help me with! I suppose I am after a reality check (as I'm comparing her schooling to my little class of 8 back in the day.....)

These are....
1) Most of the school day seems to be spent colouring and putting things in sets. I expected this for a couple of months but think they should have moved onto more formal reading, writing and maths.
2) I started teaching my daughter to read and write about a year ago. Another parent of a child in her class (who is herself a teacher and has an older child at the school) told me I shouldn't be doing this as she'll get bored in junior infants; that the kids really don't start until senior infants. I was very surprised to hear this!
3) The children are sometimes left alone at lunchtime with only one teacher popping their head round the door from time to time. My daughter has been bitten and kicked by boys in her class during this time. I have obviously spoken to her teacher but don't think this has been properly addressed. What are the regs on leaving junior infants alone at all?
4) Whenever I speak to the teacher about my daughter's progress, she says she is doing fine. The teacher seems so exhausted by managing the behaviour of so many kids (some are extremely difficult) that her criteria for doing well seems to be that they are easy to manage.

I'm sure that countless parents are experiencing exactly the same sort of concerns up and down the country but I suppose I'm trying to establish the point at which I start talking to the head mistress or DoE about this.

I have asked the National Curriculum Council for distinct curricula for junior and senior infants but have had not response. If anyone knows if this exists, I'd be grateful.

Thanks a mill.

Fast_Mover

Florence1 wrote: »

1) Most of the school day seems to be spent colouring and putting things in sets. I expected this for a couple of months but think they should have moved onto more formal reading, writing and maths.

Don't under estimate the importance of colouring. I could rant on about it but I'm too tired to type about them..Click: Found them on the web!

As for the more formal said of things.
Reading: I'm sure they're learning their letters via one of the following three programmes: Letterland/Jollyphonics/Newell. They are also learning sight words from the Sunny Street reader.
Writing: They would only be learning how to practice writing the letters they are learning.
Maths: Only do numbers 1-5. Sets are very important. Helps counting and in time learning to add. Its all about consolidation!! They will also be introducted to other concepts such as big/small, long/short, squares/circles, colour, etc

Florence1 wrote: »

2) I started teaching my daughter to read and write about a year ago. Another parent of a child in her class (who is herself a teacher and has an older child at the school) told me I shouldn't be doing this as she'll get bored in junior infants; that the kids really don't start until senior infants. I was very surprised to hear this!

Children in J.I are only starting around now to understand how sounds go together to make words. Once a few letters are learnt, they can try and put them together to make C.V.C (consonants. vowels. consonants) words with alot of aid from the teacher. Alot of kids won't grasp it for another while yet. But doing this at home with her will help alot, ensuring she'l have no problems in future.

Florence1 wrote: »

3) The children are sometimes left alone at lunchtime with only one teacher popping their head round the door from time to time. My daughter has been bitten and kicked by boys in her class during this time. I have obviously spoken to her teacher but don't think this has been properly addressed. What are the regs on leaving junior infants alone at all?

Teachers are entitled to a lunch break and cant be expected to stay in their classrooms 24/7..we need adult conversation to keep sane at times!:D I presume they are indoors because of the Irish weather. Teachers on duty can only go in and out of classes. What alot of schools do is have two or three 6th class students go into the classroom and supervise. Perhaps this is something you could suggest?
With regards to your child being kicked and biten..it happens in Junior Infants, however it should not be taken lightly all the same!!! Tell your daughter to tell the class teacher/the teacher on duty. Surely the classteacher/the school has sanctions in place for such incidents. Children have to learn that such behaviour is not tolerated.

Florence1 wrote: »

4) Whenever I speak to the teacher about my daughter's progress, she says she is doing fine. The teacher seems so exhausted by managing the behaviour of so many kids (some are extremely difficult) that her criteria for doing well seems to be that they are easy to manage.

When a teacher says your child is doing fine..she is. The teacher can see that she has no difficulties in any areas. If the teacher thought your daughter had a problem she'd say it to you so you could help her more at home, in turn making her life and your daughters a tad bit easier!
I'm sure you suspect yourself that your child is doing fine as you said earlier you taught her to read and write already, something her peers are only starting to do. From scanning through her homework/workbooks you'd also be able to see.

Sorry, that was only a quick reply, but hope that puts you at ease a bit. Don't worry, there's another 5months left in school. Plenty of time for more learning and fun!!!

byhookorbycrook

The infant programme is a two year one, so it is up to the school to do as much or as little in jnr infts and cover the rest in snr infts as they see fit. The curriculum documents are on the NCCA site and you will see the strands for infants there.

If your little lady can already read the teacher should try to do some differentiation for her, ie work at her level.Sadly in a class of 30+ teachers end up trying to teach to the middle ground and those at either side have to hold on as best they can.

However, it would be worth talking with the teacher to see if there is any work your child could do rather than basic phonological awareness that she already has grasped.

KateF

Florence1 wrote: »

1) Most of the school day seems to be spent colouring and putting things in sets. I expected this for a couple of months but think they should have moved onto more formal reading, writing and maths.

I think you should consider that your child is very young still. It is unfair to ask children in Junior Infants to sit still at the desks all day and do tasks such as reading, writing and maths. Its worth considering that (heopefully) her teacher is doing activities of the concrete kind at this stage. Children learn by doing, by being active in their learning. Not by sitting at a desk and reading and writing all day. It certainly has its place, once the initial understanding and knowledge of the curricular area has been founded. I guess what I'm trying to say is, a lot of the work a Junior Infant class would be doing might not have an physical evidence of work like writing or sums etc. But it doesn't mean that your child isn't learning.

Florence1

Hi - many thanks to those of you who took the time to reply to my queries.

I appreciate that she is still very small and there are many school years ahead of her. I just want her to be stimulated and work to her capabilities. She says herself she is bored of colouring all the time and sometimes doesn't want to go to school. I spoke to the teacher again yesterday and she gave her a reading book from school to bring home. My little lady was delighted with this extra special attention!

The books she works from in class never come home. She gets very basic homework which is just colouring and tracing the same letter for a page. I have thought about asking if she can bring her books home but thought that was too pushy. And that it might upset the speed at which she's working in class.

Apparently things really ramp up in Senior Infants at this school. I'm sure she'll be wishing for the colouring again at that stage!

Thanks again all.

KateF

Florence1 wrote: »

Hi - many thanks to those of you who took the time to reply to my queries.
She says herself she is bored of colouring all the time and sometimes doesn't want to go to school. I spoke to the teacher again yesterday and she gave her a reading book from school to bring home. My little lady was delighted with this extra special attention!

In fairness, it sounds as though her teacher is doing far too much colouring in with the children! I think you can overdo it, and then they just lose any interst in it.
Glad she's got some reading to concentrate on at home now. She sounds like a child I would love to have in my class. I think in Ireland there isn't enough focus on differentiation yet (or maybe that just most teachers I've seen st home) and so, they would prefer to keep her on the same work level as everyone else, so just keep asking the teacher if you are concerned

E.T.

I'm a Junior Infant teacher and I don't send home books with the children - most of the things that I send home don't end up coming back in (ranging from pencil cases to school nurse forms, consent forms etc). I spend a good portion of every day chasing down things that should have been brought back in so I'm not going to include school books in this!

With regard to colouring in and putting things in sets, these are vital early childhood activities. Colouring develops children's fine motor skills, and I personally use it as a method for teaching Irish, keeping an eye on children's memory and organisational skills, and countless other uses.

Making sets, matching, sequencing, sorting etc are part of an entire strand in the maths curriculum which covers early mathematical activity. These skills need to be acquired before (the majority) of children can move on to counting, addition, subtraction etc.

I give different homework to children in my class based on their individual ability (I have a relatively small class this year, without too many difficult children which is allowing me to do a lot more extra individual work - in a big class with difficult pupils, it's nearly impossible to find the time to do this, even when you've spent hours preparing extra work at home). This can range from tracing letters, to spelling simple words on worksheets. If you want to give your daughter some extra work at home I'd recommend the Frank Schaffer homework helper books (years k-1) they're available in a lot of bookshops and they only cost about €4 each.

I'm not sure what you'd like to talk to the Department of Education about? If you have concerns you should approach the teacher or headmistress directly. If your daughter has been bitten/kicked, and you have let the teacher know about this, the teacher should have taken some action with regard to the other children involved. I always speak to parents if their child has bitten/kicked/punched another child, and I'll take appropriate action in the classroom too. With regard to the lunchtime supervision, this is standard in every school. Teachers take turns doing lunchtime supervision - if everyone is out in the yard they'll do supervision there, but if the weather is bad, then the teachers on duty will have to do the rounds of the school, looking in on each class as they go.

Florence1

Hi again - this is all really helpful. Just great to get responses from JI teachers.

It seems that there are no issues at all with the scope of work covered in my daughters class - you all seem to think this is entirely normal. So its really 'differentiation' (new term learned today) that I'm after to ensure she gets a bit more work suited to her level.

I have to say I'm surprised that its the norm for 4 and 5 year old kids to be left alone in a classroom during wet lunch hours. Obviously I don't expect the teacher to remain with them all day long but when I was a kid, the teacher supervised us eating in our classroom (making sure noone chokes or puts all their lunch straight in the bin, I guess) then all the kids went to the school hall where we were minded by a lady who was brought in just for the lunch hour. I know, I know - its laughable that the government would shell out on someone to do this nowadays. I sometimes see kids from 6th class helping out in the mornings getting all of them into assembly so I'll ask if this can be done for lunchtime too (although I'm sure the 6th class kids need their lunch hour too!)

With regards to the biting/kicking. Unfortunately, there is one child who is not responding to any kind of reprimand and is hugely disruptive. To be honest, its him I worry about when they're all left alone. But my daughter hasn't been on the receiving end for some time now so fingers crossed that remains the case.

E.T - thanks very much for the Schaffer recommendation. I'll look into that.

mamindah

Hi Florence1,

I have worked as an sna in a junior class and know the curriculum. the teacher has to include some colouring to make work with letters and numbers interesting. colouring improves fine motor skills and tracing, matching etc are part of the junior infants maths curriculum. see www.ncca.ie, after a bit of searching around you will come accross the curriculum for junior infants for all subjects. before i started working at a particular school a heard a parent with the same type of concern as you, and she didn't think much of the teacher, but when i was in her class i was very impressed by her. she used so many methods every day to keep the kids interested and getting used to letter and recognising words. this parent gave out that they were playing with playdoh all day, when in fact play doh was kept as a treat til the end of the school day (this is probably why the parent heard about it every day), for good behaviour during the day, and the children were modelling letters from it.

I have a huge amount of respect for teachers and have yet to work with a bad teacher. I am amazed at how they cope, especially with big infant classes. Your daughters teacher sounds approachable, and you should tell her/him that you would like your child to be challenged a little more and she will keep that in mind, when planning or delivering her/his next lesson.

Also, remember that the parent is the primary educator (irish constitution) and you should continue to teach your child whatever you like... it can do no harm. Yes your child may be a little bored when her classmates eventually do start to learn to read, but the teacher will surely give her a more advanced text or let her read on ahead, etc.

I have a child starting junior infants next sept who can read many words(whole word recognition), write name, knows most letters & phonic sounds... I'm not worried about my child being bored... a lot of this was picked up in montessorri and a lot of children have the same level of skill starting school. they just have a head start and it will stand to them.

Try not to worry, but do talk to the teacher and try to be supportive of her/him, as they have a tough job.

as for the biting etc... ask if there is an sna in the class and if they can keep an eye on your daughter. if there isn't kick up about it a bit more... that should sort it.

good luck

KateF

mamindah wrote: »

this parent gave out that they were playing with playdoh all day, when in fact play doh was kept as a treat til the end of the school day (this is probably why the parent heard about it every day), for good behaviour during the day, and the children were modelling letters from it.

I thinik play dough is brilliant. I'm a postgrad Primary student and during myy placement in the infant stages the class teacher was amazing,she was just everything I hope to be as a teacher. She used home-made (far better than that stuff out of the shops, and easier to get off the carpet!) play-dough and put some essential oils in them, like lavender and camomile. This school was a particularly tough school to work in, but rewarding, the children came from very bad backgrounds and most of them would come in on a Monday totally wired to the moon after a stressful weekend at home. These children had a lot to deal with God love them.
A lot of them were still having major difficulty forming letters. The play dough is absolutely brilliant, its strengthens the muscles they will be using to write with, and it work miracles on some of the boys with ADHD, ADD or just simply with a tendency to be very tense and angry. The essential oils in the play dough really calmed them down and they concentrated brilliantly on making different shapes and letters with the play dough. Really, I could rant all day about how brilliant it is.
She also had some special theraputic play dough that a specialist in development gave her, its great, its very stiff at first but as it gets warmer in the children's hands in turns almost goo-like and really malable. The children love it, once it is put back in its container it settles and goes hard again. I think you can get them online actually

mamindah

Great idea... (homemade playdoh with essential oils)

Any chance of the recipe for the playdoh? Thanks

Fast_Mover

Yeah loving the essential oils idea!!

KateF

mamindah wrote: »

Great idea... (homemade playdoh with essential oils)

Any chance of the recipe for the playdoh? Thanks

My flatmate has the recipe, I'll post it up tomorrow

IsThatSo?

As a parent, I was under the impression that JI was as much about learning to be IN school as anything else. Of course they need to get started on the basics, but letter/number/phonics recognition is the basics

I expect that a lot of children that age have short attention spans and that "play" activities are used wisely to teach them through fun. I can imagine that it would be hard for a 4 or 5 year old to sit through a traditional lesson the way we remember them.

My son is six (almost 7) and has the reading age of an 8 year old (maybe more now) and we just sort this out by giving him suitable books at home. He does sometimes say he is bored in school, and he also finds it frustrating waiting for others in class to finish their work as he is usually the first finished. By providing him with suitable challenges at home we are able to keep this frustration/boredom to a minimum so its really not often that he complains. At this young age its easier to provide the extra challenges, maybe not so easy as they get older?! We don't worry about our son not getting enough work etc. We just talked to his teacher and she said to keep doing what we are doing. If I had concerns I would go and talk to her again, its in everybodys best interests that a child is happy in school.

star-bright

Play activities are very important to children. Children start school very early in this country some have just turned four, in many european countries children do not start formal school until 6 or 7.
I'm in third year of primary teaching and in college we are encouraged to engage children of all ages to engage in hands on activities in the younger classes these often take the form of play activities.
While I of course see the benefits of some colouring in some teachers do too much, this is because that is all that is in the textbooks for infants. Most of the textbooks children have at this level are not needed, it is well recognised that textbooks are over-used in the Primary classroom, we are discouraged from using them.

E.T.

star-bright wrote: »

Play activities are very important to children. Children start school very early in this country some have just turned four, in many european countries children do not start formal school until 6 or 7.
I'm in third year of primary teaching and in college we are encouraged to engage children of all ages to engage in hands on activities in the younger classes these often take the form of play activities.
While I of course see the benefits of some colouring in some teachers do too much, this is because that is all that is in the textbooks for infants. Most of the textbooks children have at this level are not needed, it is well recognised that textbooks are over-used in the Primary classroom, we are discouraged from using them.

This kind of attitude to colouring and textbooks is great in theory, but in reality when you've 30-40 Junior and Senior Infants in front of you, with a multitude of problems and ability levels, sometimes they have to be used more often, especially in a multi-class situation. Any teacher with a few years experience will know how to use textbooks appropriately.

luckat

I wonder would the OP have got a different answer if s/he posted this in the Parenting forum (under Soc). I suspect that the Parenting people would have been a lot less ho-hum about a child being bitten and kicked in school.

I'm shocked by it myself. Imagine what would happen if you went into work and some of your colleagues attacked you and bit you and kicked you?

And all your employers said was "Oh yeah, that happens in the first year."

Heavens!

E.T.

I think we're all still shocked as teachers about kids kicking and biting. The main problem that I've come across in dealing with such incidents is parents not taking them seriously when it's their child doing the kicking and biting! When it comes down to it, there's only so much we can do in school to reprimand children, and I don't mean this in an "I give up" or lazy way. I seriously mean that I've had to give out to children for incidents like this, but when I speak to parents and they don't do anything at home to deal with it, what more can we do in school? I've given kids work during playtime, and used a variety of different behaviour systems, but if this isn't backed up by parents, it's pretty useless. After that, kids realise they can get away with things in school because Mammy/Daddy doesn't care what teacher says. Thank god these kind of people are the minority, but unfortunately they do exist!

luckat

If the parents felt they might be open to a lawsuit, they might feel more strongly about a minatory attitude to their darlings' behaviour.