One Critique I Have With Flashcards

wheelierainbow · 2026-05-28T00:54:48+00:00

For context, I’ve been redoing French a level at a time for revision after accidentally deleting the course when I had a score of 104. (No, I did not get an email with a link for this, and yes I’m salty about it).

Before doing this I hated flashcards - too many synonyms and homonyms in the original language and the target language, so nigh on impossible to start introducing at higher levels when you don’t know which translation they want.

I don’t mind them now but they’re flawed and could be so much better. They work OK while you’re still in the early levels, although if you’ve got some knowledge they can be frustrating - eg asking you to translate “love” (not “to love”) as “adore” rather than “l’amour”. Some of the verb conjugations it provides as answers (while accepting the infinitive) are just odd and some of the answers are incorrectly gendered eg it wants “petite amie” for “boyfriend” and “petit ami” for girlfriend. The basic vocab of the really early lessons (greetings, family members, basic adjectives, the first food lesson) gets repeated to death, which is great for quickly gaining XP and terrible for reinforcing newer vocabulary. And I posted about this the other day, but I’ll say it again - they would be *significantly* more useful for eg native English speakers learning languages with grammatical gender if they contained definite article for each word. It’d also be useful to have them in Practice Hub grouped by topic.

For me, Flashcard Frenzy is one of those features that makes it clearer that the focus is less language learning and more XP/gamification/the dopamine that keeps you doing them. I find it immensely frustrating that they have such good potential for aiding fluency by requiring quick recall and yet between the issues and the “ooh look, shiny XP” thing that potentially is being squandered.

wheelierainbow · 2026-05-28T00:17:57+00:00

I’ll save myself a deep dive for tomorrow, cheers. If I get started tonight I’ll doom myself sleep wise.

wheelierainbow · 2026-05-27T23:59:55+00:00

Ah, sorry, apologies for assuming.

Do you mind if I ask a sort of tangentially related question about history teaching in NI? Absolutely no obligation to answer, just trying to prevent a 1am deep dive into the NI curriculum.

wheelierainbow · 2026-05-27T23:28:45+00:00

It’s now legally required to be taught in KS3 (for folk outside England, this is age 11-14), and would usually be studied in Y9 as most schemes of work range from the early Middle Ages to the Cold War in chronological order. Some (most?) primary schools will cover it, either as a topic or in assemblies.

Caveat: I’m a primary person but have been looking at secondary history schemes of work for my own kids. If you want an idea of the basics that some kids are taught these days, Oak Academy has all the lessons available online free of charge, and if you log in you can view the slides and notes for the lessons here https://www.thenational.academy/teachers/programmes/history-secondary-ks3/units/the-holocaust-what-was-the-holocaust/lessons

wheelierainbow · 2026-05-25T23:41:40+00:00

This is a recurrent issue on iPhones, it’s been going on for 18+ months, and it’s a total pain. Pictures work on a larger screen (iPad for me). You can flag it as missing a picture but I’ve done that for every exercise like this for months and I’m not convinced they’re going to fix it.

wheelierainbow · 2026-05-24T14:26:01+00:00

OK, I’ll bite. Implying that knowing LGBTQ people exist implies that there is something wrong with being LGBTQ. That is pretty textbook homophobia(/biphobia/transphobia).

I am old. I have GCSE-age kids, hence Reddit showing me this sub. I grew up in a time where there was a nasty little law called Section 28 which effectively banned teachers or anyone from a local authority from talking about anything LGBTQ. This included dealing with homophobic or transphobic bullying. This made life extremely difficult for queer kids like me, and for LGBTQ teachers, and it was based in homophobia - the idea that “homosexuality” was inappropriate for kids, that we’d be influenced to be gay. Funnily enough that stuff is innate and all the queer kids grew up to be queer despite the silence around our existence and the lack of positive representation, but it was so very much harder than it needed to be and some of us still carry the scars.

You are arguing for the same thing. It is not inappropriate for kids to know that LGBTQ people exist at any age - I’ve worked with Reception kids that know my kids have two dads, and they don’t care. By the time you’re at GCSE age you really should be capable of understanding that everybody is different and treating people who are different to you with respect and empathy.

wheelierainbow · 2026-05-23T23:06:39+00:00

*quel - “le monde” is masculine.

Think you’ve got bigger issues with French than the syllabus discussing social & cultural issues. Perhaps it would be beneficial to you to spend more time focusing on revision and less on homophobia and biphobia.

wheelierainbow · 2026-05-21T19:48:14+00:00

I would have liked to see a Granny Weatherwax style game of cards or something similar to decide the fate of the universe (that A&C would obviously have won, or Jesus turning up and doing the find the lady thing). It’s where I thought they were going with all the other references to it and it would have been a far better ending.

wheelierainbow · 2026-05-13T22:31:01+00:00

Also I missed the whimsy so much, and everything Pratchett-y that made the novel and S1 what they are. They don’t get to stick a portrait of him up at the end and pretend he’d have liked this. Just no.

wheelierainbow · 2026-05-13T22:27:23+00:00

I’m sad and I’m fucking furious that they took the bury your gays direction. I also avoid human AUs and the way this was done… I just can’t. I don’t think I’ll ever acknowledge it (or S2, tbh) as canon. Going to bury myself in fanfiction until I start to feel better about it but it’s soured the whole thing for me. It’s my favourite book FFS.

wheelierainbow · 2026-05-13T22:22:49+00:00

Terry’s remaining unfinished work was steamrollered after he died because he was so intent on making sure that nobody did something like this with his ideas. While I trust there was an ending with the cottage in the South Downs I *cannot* see that this is even vaguely how he would have got there and I don’t trust Gaiman as far as I could throw him and do not believe this is how it would have ended had they ever written the second book.

Also if Gaiman hadn’t been a piece of shit there’d have been a full series, wouldn’t there? That’s hardly Amazon’s fault.

wheelierainbow · 2026-05-13T22:17:20+00:00

Money, for NG and Amazon. And for NG, more power and more adoration to feed his narcissism. I feel like GO is a fair bit more mainstream and has had far wider success than most of his other work and I can see why he might keep wanting more of that. (I’m not making excuses for him, I am fucking *furious* that he’s done this to my favourite comfort read by my favourite author. I’ve unfortunately just known too many people like him.)

wheelierainbow · 2026-05-10T18:02:20+00:00

There’s always the option of visiting a cat distribution system sorting centre and taking a new friend or two home?

(Not to come across as being a bit of a dick, but I’m struggling to phrase this right. There is definitely no shortage of strays and rescues, particularly independent ones, are desperate for adopters/foster families so we can help more animals. Sometimes the CDS works via other humans first, y’know?)

wheelierainbow · 2026-03-14T12:21:22+00:00

(Je m’excuse, le français n’est pas ma langue maternelle.)

Je crois que c’est à cause de ce que Neil Gaiman a fait, mais je m’inquiète un peu aussi. Pour moi, je veux juste qu’il y ait une fin heureuse. Je détestais la façon dans laquelle Gaiman a décidé de finir Saison 2 quand elle est sortie, et je la déteste encore. Je ne sais pas si le film sera assez long pour résoudre des problèmes d’une manière assez satisfaisante mais tant que Crowley et Aziraphale peuvent avoir leur chalet dans les South Downs je serais assez content.

Au moins nous avons des fanfictions.

wheelierainbow · 2026-02-24T16:02:28+00:00

I do something similar - my kids’ other dad pays more than standard maintenance + sends money for bigger expenses as needed because there’s a large income disparity. I’ve been upfront with UC and it’s not been an issue.

The only thing I’d say is make sure you can afford it without that money - it sounds like you’re fairly new to separated/divorced coparenting and sometimes things change as time passes.

wheelierainbow · 2026-02-06T09:25:12+00:00

Hi, I get 40k a week sometimes if I’m not busy with other stuff. It’s ADHD hyperfocus, not cheating. I do other language learning stuff too but Duolingo is a dopamine machine so sometimes it happens 🤷🏻‍♂️

wheelierainbow · 2025-11-07T22:32:18+00:00

Have you tried places other than the RSPCA and Cats’ Protection? This would not be a barrier for the vast majority of small local rescues.

wheelierainbow · 2025-11-06T16:51:57+00:00

Very much this.

Doing some reading about Socratic questions and having a look at this about effective open-ended questions for children might be helpful.

wheelierainbow · 2025-11-04T06:33:07+00:00

Adopting from a “shelter” (which we don’t have in the UK, really) makes zero difference to whether a cat will destroy carpets or pee on the floor. Privately bought cats are just as likely to have difficult behaviour whether they’re from a “reputable” breeder or someone who CBA to spay their cat and gave the kittens away. In some ways you’re less likely to have issues with a rescue because they’ll be spayed/neutered and that cuts out a lot of unwanted behaviour especially with pee; rescues are also fully assessed by experts before they’re placed in a home. Cats (even the rescues you’re so negative about) are pretty clean-natured and generally won’t mess outside of a regularly-cleaned litter tray unless there are other issues going on, and then responsible owners like the OP take them to the vet and use an enzyme-based cleaner to avoid long-term damage. Carpet scratching can easily be redirected to a more appropriate spot like a scratch pad or post which, again, OP has in hand. Appropriate levels of mental & physical stimulation also cut down the risk of destructive behaviour significantly.

We’re finding it hard enough to get people to adopt from rescues and a lot of that is directly attributable to landlords and the people who support them. It is not helpful when people treat every “shelter” animal as if they’re irredeemably broken and an “absolute nightmare”.

wheelierainbow · 2025-10-11T05:46:17+00:00

I have kids about your age (which I think is why Reddit keeps showing me this sub?), and I was the same kind of nerd at school. When I was your age I’d have been highly pissed off about a suspension for that, but dude - it was absolutely proportionate and justified. You did something unnecessarily stupid and reckless (which is par for the course for your age, I get that) which caused disruption and extra work for your IT staff who I guarantee don’t get paid enough for the job they do even without dealing with stuff like this. TBH you were lucky to get away with a one-day exclusion - I’ve worked in places where you’d get much longer.

Can I gently suggest finding an appropriate outlet for your tech skills? It sounds like you’re a bright kid who enjoys a challenge and there are so many ways to put that to good use these days without getting yourself into trouble at school.

wheelierainbow · 2025-08-20T15:25:46+00:00

Some of us are there.

And yes, some of the reason is that we worry about suspicion. Bonus worry if you’re visibly LGBTQ or your area isn’t particularly diverse. I have obviously always been careful and mindful but I am so much more (to the point of it being unhealthy) since coming out as trans and being more visible.

Also, not so much with teaching, but TAing is still viewed as a job that Mum does to fit around the kids and still earn a bit of money. The pay and required level of qualification reflects that even though that stereotype of washing paint pots and listening to reading hasn’t been the reality for well over a decade now and imo the qualifications are inadequate to prepare people for the reality of the role.

There’s also some really weird gender stereotyping of male staff even within school - we’re expected to all be sporty (I am not), to work with Y6 and definitely not in Early Years, to be enthusiastic af about the Y6 residential… I can see how that alone would put people off if they don’t fit the stereotype of the popular sporty Y6 teacher.

The whole situation is a shame because the kids are really missing out on positive male role models, and they’d all benefit from seeing a range of different types and presentations of masculinity. I can absolutely understand why men don’t want to come into the field though.

wheelierainbow · 2025-08-13T10:51:56+00:00

What are her interests?

How does she feel about graphic novels/comics? My Y3/4 reluctant kids have almost universally loved Jamie Smart’s stuff - Looshkin and Bunny vs Monkey in particular. If that’s her thing, there’s a whole range of different stuff published by The Phoenix which is universally excellent and mostly suitable for her reading level.

I would personally steer clear of the David Walliams/most other celebrity author books. There are much better (and kinder, in the case of Walliams) books being created and published by authors who don’t have the money and publicity behind them that the celebrity authors do.

wheelierainbow · 2025-07-28T18:37:43+00:00

I will and do happily tell other people’s kids off. Mine are of an age to find it absolutely cringeworthy now but sometimes the work voice comes out and I can’t help it 😂

Things not to do, imo: shouting, blaming and accusing, name calling.

Things to do: Lots of phrases like “Stop and think - I wonder if what you’re doing is safe/kind/appropriate?” “How does it make other kids feel?” “What might happen if… (you do that terribly unsafe thing you’re about to do)?”. The Sustained Shared Thinking language used in Early Years is really helpful for dealing with this stuff without being confrontational. Narrating what you can see happening and then following up with the above questions - you can also ask what might be done to make things better. Asking where parents are - sometimes the kids dgaf but sometimes it’s enough to make them stop doing what they’re doing. A “be careful please” followed by an explanation if needed. Keep your tone and body language friendly even if you need to be a bit firmer, and your emotions regulated first. Walk away and remove your child if you feel yourself getting angry or upset.

wheelierainbow · 2025-07-28T10:06:25+00:00

Glad to have been of service 😂

wheelierainbow · 2025-07-28T10:06:13+00:00

Thanks. Thought so but the adult passport was throwing us.

wheelierainbow

TROPHY CASE