My son is 7. He's in year 2, a September baby so one of the oldest in the year group. He's also big physically for his age and an old soul with a very adult view on life. He is bright and is at least a year above where he should be in maths. He is a strong reader and has an inquiring, logical mind. His handwriting is a disaster though as is anything that requires him to sit still or require fine motor skills.
He is at a private school. The school is lovely and from what I can see, the teaching style is great - lots of really fun learning, not just sitting at a desk doing stuff by rote.
But my son hates it. He says school is boring. I am trying to figure out whether he is just being a monkey who doesn't like having to sit at school and work or whether he needs to be challenged more.
His BIG issue is maths. He does get more challenging work than the other children in his class but his teacher still insists that he has to do some of the stuff which he finds very easy and therefore boring. Her argument is that he needs to practice the processes / methodology e.g. using number lines (?) to work out sums so that when they get to more difficult stuff, he has the process down pat. I see her rationale, but my son's response to this was:
'I can do these sums in my head and I will never use this process. It is stupid.'
I am not a teacher. To me it makes sense to get the processes completely sorted so that more complicated stuff can be built on later, but he is becoming so distressed (crying/refusing to go to school) about it that I am now wondering whether he has a point and that he does find the work boring.
I guess my question to teachers is: if you have a bright child, is it necessary to make them do the same processes over and over (the school policy is to cover each thing up to six times so that it is firmly embedded in the child's head but they cover it in different ways) or if a child seems to have got a concept down, can they then move on? Same goes for reading books - he hates that he has to work his way through the 'boring' school books (the different colour reading schemes) when he wants to read more interesting stuff.
I want to talk to the school about what to do for him but am genuinely not sure if he is bored because he's a boy and would rather be playing vs bored as he's not challenged.
Any advice appreciated
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I need a the views of teachers please
28 replies
joshandjamie · 22/04/2013 07:10
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