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2nd trimester reports


Wendy
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Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that my children complain about the length of the school day (8.30-4.30 in  primary and maternelle 8.00-4.30 for collège) They were born in france, they have never known anything else and, as you say, they find it normal. It's just that I personally feel that leaving home at 7.15 coming back at 5pm and then starting homework makes for a long day. I'm professeur principal to a class of 3eme and it was our conseil de classe yesterday. For so many of them we had to say how tired they had been this term.

 

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I never noticed 'fun' being a concept that the French grasped in relation to schools. You went, you took yet another controle, you dragged yourself home, did 2 hours homework, ate your dinner and crashed out to be at school for 8am next day...this was 6ieme last year. My two daughters loathe sport and participated as little as possible the entire time they were at school (maternelle through 5ieme), despite my explaining until I was blue in the face that getting 1/20 dragged the 20/20 in English down to below the magic 12! So on paper, they were lousy students, in practice about the same as everyone else (except for sport!). I am afraid to say that I took very little notice of the sarcastic (frequently) comments on their bulletins and praised or berated them according to how well I perceived they had done, given the work they were set. I was not bothered that they weren't top, or even near it, neither plans a career in anything sportive, so to my mind the marks was immaterial. Perhaps I am just a lousy mother!

Funny though, after 3 weeks at a new school here in London (fished out of first one due to bullying), daughter 2 is now top of the class...and yes, this is the same child that had scorn poured on her non-stop at College in France...........

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Sorry, I can't work out the proper way to to quote just part of a text.

battipuss said:

" I never noticed 'fun' being a concept that the French grasped in relation to schools. You went, you took yet another controle, you dragged yourself home, did 2 hours homework, ate your dinner and crashed out to be at school for 8am next day...this was 6ieme last year. My two daughters loathe sport and participated as little as possible the entire time they were at school ..."

I understand your experience but for others reading just want to say that ours is quite the opposite. Our four (in 4eme, 5eme, CM2 & CM1) love school here, they *do* think it's fun despite the hard work and homework. They look forward to holidays but by the end of the holidays they look forward to going back to school to see their friends. They did find it tiring at first but all seem to cope without any problem now.

Holly

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[quote user="battypuss1"]Actually I meant 'fun' as in interesting projects, drama, creative writing...[/quote]

Ah, I see what you mean. However, our school has a drama group, a choir group, a biology club which looks after the school animals and various extra-curricular sports activities. The children go on outings, some of which are fun and some are more educational. They do IDD, which are sort of outings combined with projects. They really do seem to do 'fun' stuff too, but I appreciate that not all children would.

Holly

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[quote user="Teamedup"]Holly1 your schools are exceptional then with all those ex curric activities.[/quote]

I should clarify that the extra-curricular activities are in college only, not in the primary schools. Also that the outings and projects are part of the curriculum.

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[quote user="Holly1"]

However, our school has a drama group, a choir group, a biology club which looks after the school animals and various extra-curricular sports activities. The children go on outings, some of which are fun and some are more educational. They do IDD, which are sort of outings combined with projects. They really do seem to do 'fun' stuff too, but I appreciate that not all children would.

[/quote]

Holly, I am speechless!!  Your collège really has all that?  Animals????  Excuse me while I go for a lie down in a darkened room.......

IDD is just a pain in the cul as far as my son and his classmates are concerned.  Most of the time the teacher's not even there (and as you know, they rarely get replaced unless it's really long-term), and when she is there, it's just dull.  Certainly no outings!

There was a choir group at lunchtime last year, but it coincided with the huge rise in choirs after Les Choristes, so there were about 80 of them squeezed into an ordinary classroom!

Egalité, égalité, égalité, hang on while I check in the dictionary for the millionth time, I'm sure I misunderstand this word!  LOL.

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I see from where you live you are around 30 minutes or so from where

our kids went to college some years ago and I too am totally speechless

that a college that close to theirs couldn't even get close to offering

all that.

Our kids had outings  but so rare in fact, that in 4 years I

recall that the  kids had the chance to go abroad (Spain) in one

of the years and in the troisieme, skiing in the Jura.

You (and your kids) are very fortunate indeed Holly.

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So much depends on the teacher for things like outings (well for anything interesting really) My son's class is going to visit a goat farm (and why not?) in a couple of weeks and two days later one of my 5emes is off to wander around in the local countryside and discover their provencal roots. Both trips take into account parts of the curriculum but it's getting more complicated to organise trips and the responsibilty is frightening. It's a sad thing to say, but one the teachers organising is still quite young and hasn't had the "keenness" worn off by the system. Another sad thing, both teachers have had to justify these outings to parents who wanted to make sure they were pedagogically sound and that their kids wouldn't be missing too much in other classes.

I don't like IDD's. Back in the bad old days, there was something called PAE (I think- the initials get confusing) In 5eme and 4eme schools could ask for extra hours to build projects (up to 2 hours per week per class) and really inspired teachers used this possibility to give kids extra, more interesting things. Quite often a couple of teachers from different subjects worked together on the project.

Unsurprisingly enough, it was a success. So the ministy, in their wisdom decided to make it obligatory. And part of the curriculum. The first texts were interesting. You were supposed to offer as many IDD's (at the time they had another name) as there were classes, then the kids chose the ones (two in a year) they wanted to do. The contents had to be part of the curriculum and at the same time nothing too important as not every pupil would do it. it had to be taught by two teachers from two different subjects, but both doing their curriculum. So they were all supposed to have IDD at the same time and of course the discovering Germany IDD was going to be as popular as the learning to use the internet one. These hours were contained in teachers timetables, so instead of it being volontaires, it was people and subjects that needed a spare hour to make up their hours. Next year our principal has decided that technology, Hist/géo and physics are doing the 5eme IDD's and physics, technology and English are doing the 4eme. (I'm trying to find something that can work as a cross over in English and physics- since I'm pretty sure which poor mug of an English teacher is going to end up doing it)

This is why so many IDD's are dull and uninspired. My husband planned one with a French teacher. (chivalry and the knights of the round table as seen in films -any excuse to watch monty python) They chose to do it, asked for the hours, spent  most of the summer term planning it and threw themselves into it from september. but in most schools, teachers find ouut that they have got an IDD and with which subject and which teacher in that subject in september, 2 weeks before IDD's start.

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"Holly, I am speechless!!  Your collège really has all that?  Animals????  "

I don't think I do speechless, but I am equally surprised that other colleges don't seem to be like 'ours', I assumed they all did the same sort of thing! Animals are nothing exotic btw, rats, mice birds etc although the birds had to go cos of bird flu so we now seem to have acquired some zebra finches! IDD has included some tree hugging, walking through the town with eyes closed holding onto a rope trying to work out where they were going by the sounds (someone fell up a kerb and a couple of them got scratched by a rosebush but a good time was had by all!), visit to a recycling centre, building mud-pie/sandcastle things out of materials found on a walk, pouring pink and purple paint onto a big sheet and accidentally on purpose all over some steps, which were purple for ages afterwards...all quite fun things. Some less interesting too obviously. Apparently there are also astronomy, health and handball clubs and a reading group, all at lunchtimes. So YES, I think we must be lucky.

Back to the original point of the thread, the reports and assessments...  I too think that testing as they go along is less stressful than something like SATs. But in our schools, primary and college, there IS great emphasis put on the overall moyennes, the individual moyennes and the child's position in the class compared to everyone else. Three out of my four do very well and luckily are good at sports too, so they are always at or near the top of their year. The other is a bit above average, gets a moyenne of 12/13 which I am happy with, he is about where he was in his class in Ireland. But he finds it quite hard and compares himself to the others, it doesn't do his confidence any good at all and sometimes he gets quite discouraged and doesn't want to bother learning/working. God knows what it must be like for the kids at the bottom, particularly those with parents who put such emphasis on marks out of 20, that whole thing is so ingrained in the system.

Rough play and bullying seems to be tolerated more than I would like too.

Holly

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  • 2 weeks later...
I agree with whoever it was that said that the frequent tests take the stress out of the process :)

As far as no posative comments go, though, my daughter's report this time was full of them... and even had "Encouragements" underlined in red at the bottom!

The form tells you how many tests there were, the class average, the top mark and the bottom mark (as well as the dhild's mark of course!) Personally I find this helpful, as it lets you know where they stand.

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  • 11 months later...

Can anyone tell me when this 2nd Trimester started? Our eldest has just arrived home with her report and on looking at one subject moyen it seemed low, she has gone back through her controls for when she says the trimester started , we have calculated her moyen to be about25% higher than the teacher has worked it out to. So before we go showing ourselves and her up would like to know if we got the date correct[geek]

 

We come under Montpellier.

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I think there are some sort of semi official dates for each academie but it's mainly up to the school to decide cut off dates. A lot of teachers don't respect those dates much either. I know teachers who once they have got a certain number of grades, then put all the next ones onto the next trimestre. Personally, if the trimestre is supposed to stop on the 20th February and I have a test on the 25th based on things we've studied during the second trimestr, then I'll put it in that trimestre all the same. In most schools, you can fill in the bulletins up to 48 hours before a conseil, so for a lot of us, that's the cut off date and the start date of the next term.

I'm sorry this hasn't helped much. Maybe you could work out her moyenne for the two terms (I'm assuming she still has all her tests or has noted everything in her carnet) and then compare that with a moyenne made from the two bulletins. Even if that doesn't calculate out, you may have to take into acount any weighting the teacher may have used (most count work done at home with a lower weighting than work done in class) and if there is an oral/participation grade.

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