I was about 6 or 7 when I read Lord of the Rings.

So? There's a massive difference between some children accessing more challenging books and books aimed at much older children being given as exemplars.

Balls to the expectations.
I get so annoyed by it all sometimes, the pressures put on parents, on teachers and on kids to meet some arbitrary goalposts can fuck off.

The older I get the more anti establishment I'm getting.

Let kids be kids! RARGAGAGAGAGARAGAGARBLE.

I'm going to get a drink

g.man wrote:

Diluted Dante wrote:

Wookienopants wrote:

So we get sent planning for PE lessons for the kids. Word got out (via my wife) that I used to be a PE coach and also hold a gymnastics instructor qualification so guess whos getting badgered to help all the other parents with their kids gymnastics lessons... goddamn it.  Is it selfish if I say no, I'm swamped as is?

Just send them links to the Joe Wicks videos.

Might be a bit violent for children.

Going to rescue this from the page turn.

tigersgogrrr wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

tigersgogrrr wrote:

So? There's a massive difference between some children accessing more challenging books and books aimed at much older children being given as exemplars.

I mean, that’s fair, but what do you do if you are ahead of your reading age? There aren’t many books aimed at 6 year olds with more challenging language in them.

What are you talking about, Yoss? The point is that it is a shit exemplar, not that children must be banned from reading them on pain of being thrown into a fire.

I don’t get why it’s shit is all. Seems like something I’d have read at around that age had it existed.

Thinking about it, maybe it was The Hobbit I read at around that age, with LotR being a little older. I do remember being assessed as having the reading level of an 11 year old at age 6.

Diluted Dante wrote:

Because you are a massive outlier Yoss. Its a terrible recommendation for that age group.

Right, but from about the age of 12 or 13 I hated school, I hated education, I wasn’t being stretched, I was bored to tears and I eventually dropped out of it and ended up working in retail.

Perhaps something like this might have been useful in recognising what I was capable of and pushing me towards something more challenging which would have kept me more engaged?

So now that this got a bit more serious, I can share my experience of being totally gobsmacked at what my year 2 boy is supposed to be able to do.

Yes, learning about grammar is a worthy goal. but yes, it should be age appropriate.

Learning about the name of some grammatical thing, then remembering it by heart, then having to write a frankly codified text which specifically contains these things (destroying a large chunk of creativity, ownership and individualism to the writing) is a heart-breaking thing to teach my son.

Perhaps in my day it was too far the other way (we learnt nothing of grammar, right up to and including GSCE English, as far as my memory serves) but the fun of writing a creative story with almost no boundaries is a precious memory - I'd take my text book home and continue writing after school sometimes.

For Erik, it's a chore, which involves hours of upfront difficult reading, concepts, and rote learning before he can put pen to paper to write something incredibly constricted and controlled. It's also really difficult - conceptually and in practice, and I think he's a pretty bright kid.

All the stuff about exam boards and publishers is disgusting, a real cartel thing, that's been encouraged by NuLabour and Gove and now seems almost impossible to dismantle.

the idea that Erik should be able to read and understand, by himself, the concepts of death, relationships, present in Goblet of Fire just astounds me.

Yossarian wrote:

Thinking about it, maybe it was The Hobbit I read at around that age, with LotR being a little older. I do remember being assessed as having the reading level of an 11 year old at age 6.

Diluted Dante wrote:

Because you are a massive outlier Yoss. Its a terrible recommendation for that age group.

Right, but from about the age of 12 or 13 I hated school, I hated education, I wasn’t being stretched, I was bored to tears and I eventually dropped out of it and ended up working in retail.

Perhaps something like this might have been useful in recognising what I was capable of and pushing me towards something more challenging which would have kept me more engaged?

Dude this is a pull back and a half. Hobbit vs LOTR might seem inconsistent to us but christ that's a reading age gap.

I now know 3 people (and I'm not terribly social) who have dropped out of primary school teaching for various reasons, but they all had this grammar shite as a common gripe

regmcfly wrote:

Yossarian wrote:

Thinking about it, maybe it was The Hobbit I read at around that age, with LotR being a little older. I do remember being assessed as having the reading level of an 11 year old at age 6.

Diluted Dante wrote:

Because you are a massive outlier Yoss. Its a terrible recommendation for that age group.

Right, but from about the age of 12 or 13 I hated school, I hated education, I wasn’t being stretched, I was bored to tears and I eventually dropped out of it and ended up working in retail.

Perhaps something like this might have been useful in recognising what I was capable of and pushing me towards something more challenging which would have kept me more engaged?

Dude this is a pull back and a half. Hobbit vs LOTR might seem inconsistent to us but christ that's a reading age gap.

Honestly can’t remember the books that well, I was quite young.

From my googling it seems that the Goblet of Fire is recommended for readers of about 11, so based on my assessed reading age at 6, it seems like something I’d have been able to handle.

That’s fair, I genuinely can’t say for sure what I read and understood.

My reaction was mostly based on the fact that I feel like I was let down by my education through several schools. I just hope that teachers can and do recognise kids like I was and can offer them more than I was offered, that’s all.

I am absolutely not suggesting that in any way, shape or form.

Celtic Connections is a traditional music festival, run in Glasgow at this time every year. They usually have a schools/education strand as part of their programming. So, this year, they’ve done it online. Mini-concerts aimed at homeschooling. Might be some good stuff in here.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLboTtfd6l4fqONOo35oXbSoZB17g-vL-8

I can help if you need a mentor, particularly for situations.involving conflict resolution, bullying, and all around shittalking / teaching other kids some respect