#primary school teaching

[problematicprocrastinator]

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[dwendog]

I am of the (apparently somewhat controversial) opinion that if you’re not old enough to go to Hogwarts, you’re not old enough to read Harry Potter. Not just in terms of reading ability - I genuinely don’t think kids who are younger than 11 should be reading about some of the fucked up shit Voldemort does in the later part of the series. A year 3 teacher in one of the Facebook groups I’m part of has just asked about which of a selection of books, including Harry Potter, she should read to her class. I voiced this opinion, and while several others have agreed that year 3 is too young for Harry, other people have said that they think it’s fine. I mean, I think you’re wrong, and you should be particularly careful when you’re dealing with other people’s kids, but I’m not going to argue with you, because I don’t have the time or energy to try and make you realise you’re wrong.

There is someone, however, who has said read Harry, because it might motivate them to read the rest of the series and then become readers. No problem with the becoming readers part. I agree, Harry is GREAT for that. But seriously, you think it’s a good idea for 8 and 9 year olds to be reading a series where the main antagonist revives himself using the blood of an enemy, the flesh of a servant, and the bone of his dead father? And who commits murder to split his soul and become immortal? And repeatedly tries to kill an innocent child because he’s heard a rumour that said child will be his downfall? Not to mention the fucked up stuff happening in the Crouch family, the monster that is Delores Umbridge, and the entire Snape situation? HAVE YOU ACTUALLY READ THE REST OF THE SERIES, WOMAN???

[dwendog]

Just looked at the syllabus, and I have technically covered all the grammar I have to teach this year. Which means I have a full term to teach them about why we do not put apostrophes next to every s in our writing, and then revise things like “Why paragraphs make it easier for me to mark, and therefore work to your benefit”, “Descriptive language makes your writing more interesting, and therefore helps me stay awake while I’m marking, which, again, can only work to your benefit”, and “For the love of god, stop putting random capital letters everywhere, and then using lower case ones for the first word of a sentence, because it makes me want to cry and stab things”.

[dwendog]

Educhums, help a girl out. We’re doing celebrations this term, and I’m looking for Christmas style celebrations in non-Christian cultures. My understanding is that if you’re looking at other major religions, the big festivals are Ramadan/Eid for Muslims, Diwali for Hindus, and Rosh Hashanah for Jewish people, but I was not even remotely raised in any of these cultures, so I could be super wrong. Can anyone confirm/deny this? Also, if you have year 2 appropriate resources for teaching about any of these celebrations (or any others, for that matter), it would be awesome.

[dwendog]

When you’re teaching tiny humans (i.e. my year 2 class), how many sentences do you expect a paragraph to have? We’re doing paragraphs later this week, and I’m not quite sure how to frame it. I’m just introducing the concept to them, because the syllabus says they should be familiar with the idea, and I’m also sick of getting a page and a half of writing that is one block of text. We’ll being doing persuasive writing later in the term, and I’ll introduce them to OREO paragraphs then, but for now, they just need an understand of what a paragraph is and when we start a new one.

I like the idea of using a hamburger diagram, but they all seem to work on the principle that you need at least 3 fillings on a hamburger, and that seems a bit rough for 7 and 8 year olds. At the very least, I think they should be doing a topic sentence and one other sentence, but adding a concluding sentence to that seems like a bit of overkill, and expecting a topic sentence, two content sentences and a concluding sentence seems like it’s a bit unreasonable.

Thoughts? Suggestions? No real ideas, but sympathy for my confusion?

[dwendog]

Housemate: Oh, what are you cooking?

Me: Playdough.

HM: What?

Me: We're comparing fractions this week, and the kids need something they can physically manipulate and they've already cut and folded paper several times, so I thought we could use playdough. But I don't have any at school at the moment, so I'm making some.

HM: I didn't realise that was in teachers' job descriptions.

Me: I mean...I guess it's not technically. We just kind of...find ourselves doing these things.

HM: Your job is kind of weird, isn't it?

Me: When I stop and think about it, yeah, it really is.

[dwendog]

Apparently “I’m teaching capacity on Tuesday” is not really an adequate explanation for the 2.5 kg of coloured rice drying on the dining table.