In my later years in primary school we had to make our own spelling lists using words which we had spelled incorrectly in our writing. During spelling practice times, it was those words that we would work on. However I'm not sure that was the best way to learn how to spell. It alienated the good spellers who were forced to choose words like "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" to fill up their spelling lists. Problems then arose when the teachers asked us to put each of our spelling words into a sentence. We couldn't complain, because complaining would only invite the response, "The point was to pick words that you're going to use in your writing!"
Perhaps there should have been a greater emphasis on grammar. I remember reading some poems or stories written by people in year 6 or 7 in primary school and seeing a few that seemed to be written in Engrish. In all fairness, there might have been some people who spoke English as a second language in that bunch that I wasn't aware of, but by year 7 it shouldn't be necessary to spend so many lessons on quotation marks. We had definitely started learning about those in year 2 because I remember the teacher telling us to put a 66 at the beginning of speech and a 99 at the end. I don't think we ever really progressed past quotation marks, which made me pretty angry when a relief teacher corrected my work by putting a semicolon in place of a hyphen. I was angry not because I was being corrected (for once!) but because I had never been taught how to use a semicolon and therefore should not have been expected to know how. Semicolons, hyphens and commas, to me, come under the category "dodgy pieces of punctuation;" that is to say, their use seems to be a bit arbitrary.
Even the use of words seems a bit arbitrary. Thesaurus.com says that arbitrary can mean "whimsical, chance," with synonyms such as "erratic" and "optional," or it can mean "dictatorial" with synonyms such as "absolute" and "no ifs ands or buts."
Actually, on second thoughts, forget all I have said about schools needing to place a greater emphasis on spelling or grammar. The whole primary school framework needs to be reworked- and desperately, too. Here are some of my random comments on primary school.
Rules
Gosh, the rules. You might think that I am the "too cool for school" type when I say this, but I'm not. No, I was a conformist, I am ashamed to say. Here is a snapshot of some of the rules my primary school had.
- No hat, no play. This was an okay rule and would have stayed okay if it hadn't been reworked during my later years in primary school so that the hatless students had to go and sit outside the staff room during break times. (This rule was waived on school photo days, due to student resistance and staff understanding.)
- Library day is only one day a week and year 3s (or was it 4s?) and younger have a borrowing limit of only one book (maximum is 4 books in year 7). Outside of that time you can't borrow books. In year 3, however, I had heard that someone else had gotten permission to borrow books outside of that time and so I requested that permission too. It was granted to me for a little while, until eventually the librarian questioned me and asked if my teacher (?!) had said it was okay. I replied in the affirmative. Now I'm not quite sure what possessed me to lie, but I think it may have been fear of my teacher as she was very loud and I hated loud noises and plus she had the habit of picking on me for some reason. I think I hoped that the matter would just be dropped and I wouldn't have to confront my teacher and ask her for permission. Alas, it was not- the librarian went and checked with my teacher. I was sent to the deputy principal's office (the deputy principal was far scarier than the principal). The deputy principal then asked me to write an apology letter to my teacher for lying to her.
- Restricted borrowing areas depending on age levels in the library. There were some "Year 7 only" books. There weren't a great number of them, but I still wonder why they were there in the first place. The worst offender was perhaps the little white trolley thing that pre-primaries and year 1s had to borrow from. Later on in year 1 (I think), the teacher would pick some students each week to gain the privilege of borrowing from the shelves like the big kids (not a one-off privilege, a permanent one). Every week she would pick some more students. I don't remember ever being picked and I always wondered why, because I was far past reading picture books at that time.
- 10 minutes eating time! 40 minutes (later shortened to 30 minutes) playing time! An okay-ish rule in junior primary because I understand that a lot of little kids would just want to go and play. However, this alienated the slow eaters, even more so when the teachers had the bright idea of making all of the year 4-7s sit outside the undercover area to eat lunch. I assume that this was because they only needed one teacher to supervise the lot of us rather than different teachers to supervise individual eating areas. Outside the undercover area were the four-square courts, so when the bell rang for playing time, the junior primary would come and play four-square in your food. You might say that it wasn't necessary for everyone to simply run off when the bell went, but in a way it was- after being forced to fit into a given mould for long enough, any kind of freedom was good. The only good thing I can say about this rule is that lunchtime was longer in primary school than it is in my high school.
- When you have finished your work, do not say anything, just quietly go on with unfinished work. This rule wasn't applicable in every classroom, but it was in my year 4 one. It alienates those who finish everything quickly.
- You can only take one book for silent reading. This rule was applicable in my year 3 classroom for the second semester (I think). This alienates and bores the fast readers who can finish several books in the allotted time for silent reading. (I used to be in that category but then in year 7, I tried to feel less alienated by not reading and now I read quickly no more, no more.)
- There was little margin for time to arrive at school. The earliest you were really allowed to arrive was 8.25am (earlier arrivals could sit outside the staff room, but you could sort of tell that this practice was discouraged). The latest was 8.40am, when school started. In my high school, it's normal for people to arrive 20-30min before school starts.
- When you arrived at school you had to go straight to your class (or at least the area outside of it). This alienates those who feel better on their own. I recall one time, in year 6 I believe, I went to the eating area outside of class as the classroom wasn't opened and for some reason I felt overwhelmed by the amount of people there. I went and sought solitude beneath "The Three Trees" on our school oval. This wasn't the first time- I had done this most days for a week or so, until a teacher told me to stop because apparently I could get kidnapped by aliens flying UFOs.
- THE TOILET RULE. No, seriously, this was the worst rule out of all of the rules in primary school. Once, in year 6, I asked for permission to go to the toilet. The teacher replied in the affirmative but told me that I "owed him time after school." Thankfully, he forgot, and despite being a conformist, I did not remind him. I thought this was a one-off incident. Unfortunately, I was wrong. He eventually introduced a "toilet list" on the board. If you went to the toilet during class, your name was added to the list. If you went multiple times, dots were added after your name. This list made me feel anxious and, consequently, I went to the toilet even more. My name was, almost without fail, on that list, sometimes with a dot or two after my name. I believe this has done me some damage because apparently I didn't even talk about this to my parents. According to my mum, all I said was that my teacher "didn't like me going to the toilet during class." Also according to my mum, there's a serious problem when a kid can't talk to her parents about stuff like this (in fact, I'm having trouble writing this now, because I'm worried that everyone will laugh at me because I already talk about toilets too much *cough*aeroplanetoilets*cough*). Perhaps the problem was that I bowed to authority too readily and took a teacher's words as law that you shouldn't speak up against. Thinking of this incident makes me extremely angry that I was a conformist.
I'll break this section up into subjects or bits of subjects (English is a pretty broad subject, so that one will be broken up).
English- Spelling and Grammar
Everything I learned in spelling was by myself. I don't know all of the spelling rules to this day because I spell stuff "instinctively"- that is to say, I don't think about the spelling because I've written or read the word enough times before and also I have a tendency to think in the written word. Where I don't know a word, I spell using a combination of related words that I know and trends in other words that I know. In year 7, we had to write down as many words with the "ee" sound as we could think of. It was only when our work was marked that I remembered that in year 1 or 2 or whatever they had said that e consonant e makes the "ee" sound. There was another time in year 5 when we had to sort words according to spelling rules and I felt alienated because again, I'm primarily a visual speller who writes enough to spell most words accurately without thinking about how I'm spelling them. I told the prac teacher that I didn't learn how to spell phonetically and with her air of superiority, she asked me how I learned how to spell. I couldn't answer that question because I could spell prior to entering primary school and therefore couldn't remember.
English- Comprehension
I've always sucked at reading comprehension. Even in year 3 I was fully aware of the fact- on a self-evaluation sheet, I had written "I need to work harder at comprehension." Yet nobody was there to help me.
In Year 7 I remember on one reading comprehension sheet I picked "sympathetic" (the right answer) but then my eye fell upon the word "indifferent." I didn't know what "indifferent" meant then, but it looked good, so I decided to pick that one instead. Upon learning that "sympathetic" was the right answer, I became extremely unhappy and was bracing myself for the torments from my classmates, which never came and weren't ever going to come, but ever since year 3 I was in the habit of continually expecting them. This is the thread by which I survived primary school.
Aside from that, perhaps my problem was that I have a warped view of life and a warped view of certain word usage. In my early years of primary school I had a tendency to use the word "reason" out of context a lot (well, according to some random samples I've found lying around the house such as "Are we on the reason?"). I also knew the word "phobia" and what a phobia was because I had one of loud noises, but I didn't link those two together. Today I am, like, in, like the like habit of liking to use the, like, word "like" out of, like, context, like, a lot.
Another killing question was in year 5. The teacher had written the questions up on the board from a previous standardised test without the multiple choice answers. One of the questions was, "How has the author described [character]?" My answer was, "The author has described [character] through what the other characters have said about them." Apparently, that was incorrect and all I should have written was "The author has described [character] as weird." What gets me is that my answer was correct- the question was badly worded and so I suffered for it. It is true that in a high school level answer I would have written answers to both interpretations of the question, as in, "The author has described [character] as being weird through the usage of dialogue between the other characters in the text," but I think that in a primary school, if having one half of the answer is considered to be 100% correct, the other half of the answer should also be given some credit, not simply turned down with a shake of the head as my year 5 teacher did.
Speaking of standardised tests, I tend not to do so well in standardised comprehension tests which are multiple choice or short answer. However, I can write essays, which are "extremely long answer" questions. (I'll write more on essays- and other forms of writing- later.) Perhaps it is because standardised tests can have badly worded questions, as shown above. One question I encountered on my test was about a guy called Jacob and one of the questions asked me what distinguished Jacob from the other characters. Was it the way he saw, the way he talked, the way he walked or the way he felt? The text didn't mention anything about the latter three, as far as I can remember anyway. As for the way he saw! The text gave no hint that he may physically see anything differently from the other characters. It was more about his way of thinking. I was tempted to scribble in "E- The way he thinks" and shade in that bubble. In the end I decided to read the first option using the metaphorical meaning for the word "see" and shade in that answer. There was also another question which appeared to have more than one answer and they seemed equally good.
Anyway, I'm going off the topic here. My ramblings about these tests can be saved for another day. On second thoughts, they can be saved for all of the politicians in the world.
English- Writing
In year 7 the year 6s and 7s were set a task- to write a 10-paragraph (or however long it was) essay on how our choices influence our futures. We hadn't been taught how to write an essay. We hadn't really been given any pointers on how to write an essay. The bottom line is: if you're going to make your students write an essay, teach them how to write one first.
Each paragraph had to be at least 10 lines long. We each had our own individual ways of getting around this. I lengthened out all of my contractions and wrote long words in place of short ones (e.g. "gigantic" instead of "big" or "huge"). Also, because I use running writing, I could make a word take up a lot of space. Naturally, the tenth line of most of my paragraphs contained only one word. Some people opted to use headings for each of their paragraphs which transformed into an extra line. Bonus credit, however, goes to the aviation fanatic in my class who only wrote about five words on each line as if he was writing a poem!
Maths (or "mathematics" for you fancy ones)
I think I actually learned stuff in maths. The problems I had with maths were more with my own twisted frame of mind, not with how maths was taught. If I could change anything it would be to at least show the students how many types of maths there is out there besides the ones taught in primary school and algebra (e.g. trigonometry, linear equations) so that those ahead could go in pursuit of more knowledge- that is, if school culture didn't hold them back. Oh and to teach multiplication and division of fractions in primary school. I felt very behind when I went to high school because I hadn't been taught in primary school (we touched on multiplication once, but never division).
I was fortunate, though. At my friend's school, the year 7s had to do year 4 maths because a lot of people didn't know why you had to carry the 1 in subtraction.
Science
Let's do a competition to see how many drops of water we can put on a 5c coin!
No, seriously, that's what science was in years 3, 6 and 7 (perhaps year 4 as well). In year 6 they did a mould experiment but I was away on the day they started it.
In year 4 and 5 we did more varied experiments. Like sit outside and time how long it takes for ice and chocolate to melt. I'm being serious here, but I'm glad to say that wasn't the most exciting one we had to do. We had our fair share of balloon rockets (which I was fine with because the balloons didn't have to be blown up too big) and gliders (it was in this lesson where I made a stupid mistake because I was going to say one thing and out of my mouth came another, making me feel extremely dumb). Aside from the aviation ones, we had to build bridges and towers out of paper straws too.
Social Studies
This was never really taught as a separate subject in upper primary. Not that I can remember, anyway.
Technology and Enterprise
Let's see how much stuff we can make out of cardboard boxes and other recycled materials! Through T+E, I quickly learned the shortcomings of cardboard. I was never an artsy-project type of person, so I didn't like T+E that much, but it was bearable until the balloon car experiment.
When you're powering a model car with balloons, of course you're going to want to make it as big as possible so that your car has more air to power it. The bigger a balloon gets, the more likely it is that it will pop. The bigger a balloon is when it pops, the louder the noise it makes. I, a ligyrophobe, made all of these calculations at lightning-fast speed. T+E for the next week or so was agony. I was given solace on the day when all of the cars had to be tested in a competition. I got sent to a year 4/5 class where I had to explain to the deputy principal (who was taking that class) a bunch of kids two or three years younger than me that I had been sent to that classroom because of my fear of loud noises such as balloons popping.
This has been quite a long post and my computer slows down every time I inadvertently highlight something in it, but unfortunately I still have far more to say about primary school. If you are actually interested in this stuff, then stay tuned for part 2.
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