5 year old doing 8-9 year reasoning / Potential plus

[skal]

Hi there,

Sorry for the long post but I am just looking for guidance as to whether people have views on if we should be going for a Potential Plus assessment.

Our DS turned 5 couple of months ago. While working with him on bond books, I realised that he is able to do non-verbal reasoning for 7-8 years old (bond 11+ and Schofield & Sims) with 100% accuracy and 8-9 years old (bond 11+) with more than 80% accuracy. He's almost 2 years ahead in reading as well (the reason he doesn't read Harry Potter is not because he cannot but because he wants to read animals books, which I let him). We have a child-led approach towards teaching him and I do a lot of work with him at home too (as I think he has not found the school entirely challenging uptil now - although he has only been a term in reception).

At the same time, we have had a few behavioural issues too at school as well as home. It is mainly to do with attention and following instructions (like not pushing other children, not talking / singing while doing work in the class or at home / not being fidgety etc). I feel we have become a bit paranoid and check with teacher almost everyday whether the behaviour has been unacceptable on a particular day. DS says he simply forgets the instruction when he is asked to demonstrate good behaviour. I have no idea how not to give another chance when he says that, but I am getting sick and tired of complaints!

I have been reading other posts about Potential Plus.

1. I don't know whether he needs an assessment, although I just want to help him in the best possible way I can. e.g. if he does have a high IQ, then partially homeschooling? If there are areas of problem, I would like to help him.

1. Other than the financial cost, any bad experiences / downside of using Potential Plus? Impact on family life? Not that I want to shut my eyes to potential issues but I want to take an informed decision.

Any views / help / guidance / experience?

TIA!

[sirfredfredgeorge]

"While working with him on bond books" - What are bond books?

But it sounds like he has found school very challenging, if he's struggling to remember instructions, and not shove people etc. And you should be guiding him to work on this. So few of the reception goals are about academic pursuits, and if he's got those down easily, it's even more reason to focus all your energies and time for teaching outside on those areas.

i.e. Encourage him away from workbooks, academia etc. even puzzles (which I imagine what VR and NVR tests are) and into things which will help him not disrupt.

Also the UK school reception should be very,very child led, it's all through play. At our school, there were things out, the teachers wondered around chatting to the kids, guiding them towards different challenges or ideas. In reception was very difficult for DD to ever be unchallenged, and whilst she was quite self motivated as a learner, she also was able to ask the teachers for an extra challenge.

[Witchend]

Thing is if you're working with him on Bond books then he, will learn quickly to do them.

For what it's worth, someone passed on to me a load of Bond books and dd1 and her friends (of varying abilities it has shown as they're now 16yo!) found them quite fun to do for a while and were working that sort of level up happily. They regarded them a puzzle books. If they do them, they learn how to do them and improve.

I think what you're angling at is that you hope his poor behaviour is down to him being bored at school because he's bright. Personally I don't think that is very often the case. I've known children from bright to extremely and very obviously amazingly bright and the most disruptive they've got has been querying the teacher (and usually being right).
Generally if they're bright they're usually pretty good at finding things to entertain themselves, which can be an issue in itself.

You could query with the teacher whether she thinks there's more to it than just being a young wriggly boy, but I doubt from your description that they would think at this point that there's ADD or anything from what you've written. So I wouldn't worry too much about that yet. It's just a case that he's learning what behaviour is round school and other children. And with the support from the teacher and you it will come.

My ds from your description was similar in reception. Academic stuff came very easy, but wrigglyness was more of an issue. He definitely wasn't bored at any point even if he could do the work on his head because there were so many other things he needed to learn in reception.
And now he's in year 5 you wouldn't realise looking at him the issues he had in reception. I know in year R I sometimes wondered if he'd ever learn to give the task his full attention. Now the teacher last year said sometimes he was concentrating so hard that he didn't hear her tell them to go out to play. So there is hope!