Re: Recognising achievement
Posted: Mon Jan 29, 2018 2:54 pm
My son got star of the week for 'moving house' when he was 6. I wonder if he would have been rewarded if had stayed behind in the old one while the rest of us moved.
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Lol! When he received the award, did he compliment whoever gave it to him?kenyancowgirl wrote:When ds2 was in Y4 he came home and told me that he must be really good at reciprocity as he was always winning the prize for that.....(every year since Reception, in fact)...when asked he cheerfully admitted that he didn't have a clue what reciprocity was, although he could say it beautifully!
Indeed, I think primary schools differ hugely in this area. DDs' primary was lovely in so many ways and rewarded effort not achievement all the way. 'Sport' was 'safely' confined into hoola hoops and bean bags and competition generally discouraged (at the expense of participation IMO). However, everyone had to do Y4 swimming and at the end of term's lesson the coaches decided to have a relay race. Having carefully picked equally matched teams a teacher intervened and insisted that in order to avoid any of the children being 'humiliated' the two children who attended the local swimming club development squad be separated to race on their own as one team. Needless to say they still won, but they felt totally humiliated and isolated from a team activity and the other kids had a huge sense of injustice at what should have been a fun class activity and fair competition being spoiled. To my mind, (I was there doing a governor's observation at the time) I thought it was the most ridiculous, misguided and exaggerated attempt at preventing any 'showing off'. The kids talked of nothing else on the bus on the way back to school and all, even those who still could not swim, saw past it. The following year, the same two children were not allowed to take part in an inter school primary school swimming gala organised by the sports partnership secondary (ah those were the days) as 'it would not be fair'. Needless to say all their swim club friends from other schools participated and DDs' school came (a very distant) last, but won the fair play award. I appreciate that schools are different, but at times the drive to reward effort becomes 'reward it unless you achieve'. Perhaps unrelated but both those children, one of whom was on FSM and hugely disadvantaged in many ways went to private secondaries (we are not in a grammar area...unless you are a crazy tourist/grammar at all costs machine parent). Sorry, personal bete noire.Guest55 wrote:Sport is an interesting one -
A school I know allowed one child to show a runner's up medal for local football tournament but another child that had won an under 18 county championship was not allowed to bring in the trophy as it was 'showing off'.
Eccentric wrote:When my DD was small I read some research on rewarding hard work rather than achievement. So that is precisely what I have done, religiously rewarding effort and never results. It has backfired big time I cannot stop her working and she puts herself under a lot of stress if I make her take time off.