Beliavsky wrote:
On Dec 6, 6:35 am, "Welches"
wrote:
I'm coming from the view of #1, who sits still, listens and obeys (at school
anyway!!) and is at the top end of her form. Her teacher commented that she
"coasts" the academic side, and still is at the top. Certainly she produces
much better work at home than she does at school.

At various times she has commented that you get more rewards at school by
being "not bad" than being always good. It's been comment before but I'm
beginning to sense a frustration, as often these other children are getting
rewards frequently that she would like to have occasionally.
[snip]

Doesn't the school have letter grades based on academic achievement,
and aren't good grades rewarding for your girl? Regarding "rewarding
for effort", if exactly the same material is taught to all children,
more intelligent children will master the material with less effort.
They should not be punished for that but instead be given more
challenging material. What is the procedure in your school for
determining whether a child should skip a grade? I think should
consider it.

IME, in the UK (where Welches is) schools don't tend to use letter-type
grades until the children are about 11yo and at secondary school. Even
then, they don't have the same importance over here as in some other
countries.

I don't think that having more challanging work would help either. Her
daughter would still not be getting the stickers or whatever the
children are getting.

[snip]
I'm wondering how other schools deal with this problem, as I can't think of
a realisitc way round this where all are going to be motivated and feel
rewarded. The ones who really seem to miss out from my observation are those
who are quiet, obedient, and middle of the class in achievements, they seem
to get very, very few rewards at all.

If students are grouped by ability, the students in the middle in each
class are not so far behind the brightest as when heteregenous
grouping is used, and trying to be the best in their class will seem
more realistic to them.

But that is not solving the problem. The children are not getting
rewards for being "the best in their class". The children who are
getting rewards are the children who are "the worst in the class" when
they behave at the required standard. The children who normally behave
at the required standard aren't getting rewarded for it.

Being the best only has some reward for the children who realise they
*are* the best, and even quite clever children don't neccessarily know
that. Here is that they are spotting that the worst children are
getting the rewards, and concluding that the way to get rewards is to
behave badly some of the time, even if their natural inclination is
to behave well. Further the more extrovert children might be happy
to point this out to the teacher, but the quieter ones won't.


--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three