Any primary school teachers willing to give some feedback on DC school report

[Sheyllablum]

Hello,

We've just received our DD's (Y2) half year school report (she's in a private prep). I'm a bit underwhelmed by it considering that the teacher always says she's doing amazing and does not need to work on anything, just carry on doing great work.

I grew up in a different country and our schooling system is very different. Would someone with teaching experience be willing to read the report (it's not long) and give some feedback on whether this is standard/good and how to address different things on parents meeting. Nothing will be outed, but I'd like to send it in private.

If spelling is your main concern, then I would suggest more reading at home. It doesn't matter whether it's fiction or non fiction, just seeing the words will help her enormously.

I teach Y3 and if I had to rate their concentration there aren't many children I'd give a 5 to. Even some of the academic children have what I'd consider poor attention spans. You surely have to save 5s for the ones who can actually sit and really block out everything around them - such children are few and far between!

Spelling is nearly always the area of writing that children struggle with. Often very good writers are average spellers. There isn't really a successful way anyone has found to tackle this otherwise we'd all be doing it.

@Sheyllablum‘s child is in an independent school - they’re not required to follow the national curriculum.

None of us can reassure you properly. It sounds as if she’s progressed as expected but isn’t particularly exceeding expectations. That’s completely fine but hopefully her teacher can put your mind at rest. You probably ought to have a think about what you expect from your little girl at her age too, your current expectations sound extremely high

Well, I'm very pleased you all have great manners, I'm very happy for your great upbringing (although coming on a thread to tell someone off for not saying 'please', whilst not contributing to the thread isn't exactly what a mannered/well brought up person person would do).

I can only apologize for my terrible rudness! I will certainly remember to say 'please' next time.

And now you definitely are coming across as rude.

Pointing out lack of manners does not imply the posters are faultless. They are referring to a particular instance, in this case, you.
And no-one has to contribute to a thread, though I'd have thought calling out your brusqueness is a contribution to better netiquette.

The rude ones here are not the OP.

Would you mind / would you be willing to/ could you possibly / do you think you could / if you get a chance, could you … are all perfectly acceptable and polite alternatives to please.

Bossily telling someone ‘say PLEASE’ on the other hand when they’ve been perfectly polite is the height of rudeness.

Unless you know most people got a 5, then I wouldn't worry.
It's one of the problems with this sort of thing, because you get one teacher who never gives above a 4, and not many of those, and another who gives everyone a 5 unless they're terrible and they get a 4.

I remember a rather embarrassing conversation with dd's best friend's mum, where she thought her dd was exceptional from her score. Only thing was dd had scored better.

At secondary when dd started, they used to give (across the year so 300 pupils) percentage at each level which was hugely helpful. They then announced they weren't doing it as children shouldn't be in competition with each other. Which made the reports pretty useless as all you got was a number and you had no idea whether this was good or bad.

I realise this but, as the independent school doesn't seem to have given the op any guidance, I thought pointing her in the direction of the NC would at least show her what children in the state system are expected to know at the same age.

But that was my point OP: there are cultural differencies to when and how you use please. I was trying to explain that in one country it's not necessarily rude to just come out and ask without a please. I have a lovely Danish friend who does this all the time and I'm not bothered at all because I know it's cultural. No need to be defensive when I was actually trying to defend you😉

Absolutely this.
OP, you were perfectly polite. The posters who don't read all the OP's responses and still pile on are less than polite.

I can't answer your concern, but I do hate the policy of giving out reports and behaviour letters on the last day of term, especially if they contain real areas of concern, leaving people to worry over the holiday (especially the summer holiday). Our (state) school stopped doing this, for this reason, we had a strongly worded remark on the bottom of DS's report relating to behaviour, the teacher had transposed the wrong child's info onto our report and we had no one to contact. At the time our reports were very much cut and paste jobs, that was stopped too.

If you are paying for your child's education I'd expect a more detailed report at least.

I'm a primary school teacher:

If you want to improve your child's concentration (also imagination and independence), then keep phones/iPads etc well away from her. Read to her and have her read to you. Do activities together that you both enjoy and that require attention: cooking, sport, board games, sewing, woodwork, simple mechanics, gardening... anything offline and engaging. Being online has a pernicious effect on our ability to concentrate.

If her spelling concerns you, then read together and explicitly point out spelling at certain points. Practise school spellings together and ask her about them out of context. Do workbooks on it, a very little at a time - but cosistently. Ask aloud how specific words are spelled that you use in daily life.

In other words, note areas of relative weakness and seek to address them yourself in a low-key, no-stress way.

And yeah, go talk to the teacher.

The message was perfectly polite. Adding please is always necessary. Most people can tell when a message is polite without the superficial addition of please all the time. There are many ways of showing gratitude beyond the use of the word please.

Also the UK is weird in its insistence of using the word please. The op is not from the uk. Perhaps you could try expanding both your vocabulary and your knowledge of other cultures. So parochial.

Sorry I realised I replied to the wrong post after I sent it, sorry 😁.

@AnxiouslyAwaitingSpring

Maybe not in your impolite world but the rest of us usually do! (Most of) The rest of us were raised with good manners
Some of us were brought up understanding that there are many words, choices of phraseology and tone that communicates gratitude better and beyond the superficial and singular use of the word please.
Maybe you are more limited in your linguistic skills. Perhaps your time would therefore be better spent educating yourself rather than displaying your limitations so publicly.

Yes. This. The irony is missed by those rude posters who ignorantly don't realise that they are both limited in their understanding of language and are very parochial. They need to travel and read a bit more I fear.

Thank you so much all for your advice! It's all been hugely helpful.

I agree with a PP that reports should not be sent on last day, at the end of the day. Also I do think that the teacher could have done a bit more in terms of addressing the issue earlier rather than letting it slip considering it's a private school with 15 kids in the class.

I did always feel like 'yes Please' is a bit bossy. I thought I was weird 😅

I'm a primary school teacher. A please costs nothing.

Being polite to adults simply asking a question in an internet forum, in the same way as the vast majority of other do, doesn't cost you much either.

I agree that you should ask for specific help with the spelling issue, the other parts seem fine.

It simply means she's a tiny bit less than perfect on those two factors. I'd be delighted if my kid got 4/5 for everything.
My family are teachers, and they are not allowed to put 'perfect' for everything. They always must put something that can be worked on. For very bright kids it's often a struggle to think of anything even remotely negative to put.
For me that sounds like she's doing great.
Especially If you claim she may be ASD?

Thank you for your advice.

She's undiagnosed but school and I have some concerns.

I think your expectations of the school are far too high. Just because you are paying fees doesn't guarantee any particular results. The teacher is doing their best and a slightly lower spelling score one term doesn't warrant this level of angst

Why don’t you ask the teachers who wrote it.

It's not always possible to 'put something in place' or indeed a child is where they're at because something has been put in place and would be further behind without it. I'm in the unusual position of teaching in a state school with classes of around 20, and have had classes of 16 in the past. The children do well but not outstandingly so because you still have to let them work independently. I can't actually learn the 3x table for them or make them correctly spell words they should know if I've already encouraged them to check their work, given them a dictionary and pointed to the areas they need to relook at. They are children not robots and not all children excel in every area of the curriculum at all times.