How did your child achieve Outstanding

[AlertEagle]

Hello, child in Y2 has only one Outstanding in Reading, rest of the subjects are Working At The Expected Level. I’ve been helping him a lot at home with the help of cgp books. I thought he would get more Outstanding but didn’t. I want to ask any parents of children who have got outstanding in all subjects how did you do it, is your child just clever or you helped them and if you did how did you achieve it. Thank you

They can’t be “outstanding” at everything. Pushing them for this will not be good for their wellbeing.

I know this might sound like a silly question, but why do you need/want your child to be outstanding? You will be putting pressure on your child - I know you don't think you are, but they will be picking up on how you feel about this. Year 2 is still very little. Your child is meeting expected levels - celebrate that. It's great news. There is no need for them to be labelled outstanding by school. You already know they are outstanding to you - that's what matters. Life is about so much more than a test score.

Focus on instilling curiosity, a love of learning and sense of pride in working hard, that's what makes kids successful at school and beyond.

Your child is Yr 2, stop stressing. They all develop at different stages and at different speeds. A girl in DDs class in Yr 2 was thought to be gifted + talented, by Yr 6 she wasn't even meeting expectations.
DD was always bumbling around "meeting expectations" until Yr 5 when she suddenly shot ahead, got GD in SATS, won a scholarship at secondary etc.

With all kindness, chill out and enjoy your child. Read to them, talk to them and make sure they have breadth of interests eg hobbies etc. The rest will come.

They are 7 years old. Seriously chill out and don't put this on your kid.

I taught my child to read before he went to school and if he expressly said he didn't understand something they'd done in maths at school, we'd have a look at it and I'd explain it him so he did understand it.
He was GD in all the subjects in yr 2 and yr 6 Sats. I also read to him every day.

You know, I was thinking about this recently. All my siblings achieved the highest marks at school, and we didn't do homework or tutoring. Our parents were teachers, it's true, but instead of tutoring they created a rich learning-through-play environment around us.

We read together and discussed books and our ideas quite freely and unselfconsciously. We played many many games. We asked a lot of questions and looked up the answers together, with ignorance treated as an opportunity. We broadly ranged through interests, and had lots of time for things like playing instruments and singing, team sports, acting, board games, as well as things like programming our own games and building little mechanical experiments and so on. And we also lay around like zombies, eating Mcdonalds and watching Star Trek when we were tired! It wasn't some Instagram childhood.

As an adult I can see the tremendous advantages this gave us at school. But it was just all playing to us. Our parents were pretty light touch - sitting side by side with us and doing their own things - perhaps that's actually the main thing: they were themselves always reading, making things, painting, dancing -- it didn't feel like stuff we were being made to do as kids, but just how people lived.

Outstanding sounds like effort level, not progress level? My child is expected in all areas, but effort level is outstanding in quite a few areas.

Lots and lots of reading for pleasure. Comics and graphic novels, recipes, treasure hunts etc. We went to all of the free events at the library and did the summer reading challenge every year. Being able to read fluently unlocks so much more.

Expected is fine, especially when they are little. My 12 year old was "developing mastery", now "greater depth" in science because he loves finding out how things work. My 14 year old loves history and art but hates English. I find when children really love a subject they get good at it.

OP i think in our education system it's essential for parents to take an interest and help at home !
Class sizes are too big and we know that teachers are incredibly stressed and overwhelmed single handed dealing with all the variations of Sen in one class.

Parents should definitely get involved and help in these crucial years. However , is being able to do a cpg book a sign of being clever?

Reading helps of course but you can get words via podcasts etc and all sorts

Our DC achieved outstanding because that is their natural ability. That being said, they do try to do the minimum and so fair amount of pushing on both sides (School and Home) was needed to get them to that point.

High expectations are important of course, but I also believe that a child doing their best is quite good enough, whatever level that brings them out to.

Primary teacher here.
Please don't sweat this -for your DC's sake. I teach children who are acutely aware of their parents' expectations of and aspirations for them and it invariably overlays what ought to be the joy of exploration and discovery which learning is, with a kind of anxious scrambling which really gets in the way. A kind of 'false learner-self' is created, which robs the child of an authentic learning experience.

If you want to do something useful for your child, don't speak to them about arbitrary grades and standards for assessment. Instead, play games and engage in real life activities which support your child with knowing their way around the number system with ease, understanding place value properly, and developing a 'by heart' fluency with number bonds to 10, 20 and 100 and their multiplication times tables. When children know their number bonds and later, their times tables inside out, upside down and back to front, so much falls into place fairly effortlessly later on. Playing cards, Yahtzee, handling change, Monopoly, junior sudoku etc are great. Real life measuring (length, weight, capacity, time) can be woven into everyday activities without your child feeling as if they're being tutored by stealth.

Praise and fan the flames of your child's love of learning where you see it, and refrain from adding pressure in other areas.

At that age it’s all nonsense. Just encourage them to enjoy learning and the rest will follow. Dd never made it past ‘meeting the standard’ in anything at primary school; she’s taking her GCSEs next year and is predicted 9s across all ten subjects.

@VenusClapTrap I strongly disagree it's laying the foundations of leaning and as someone who basically didn't get educated until I was 10 I know the gaps I have.
A child falling behind or struggling in primary could have sen and if left their learning journey can be severely impacted and they could give up.
Your child is an outlier

Although I agree with enjoy learning.
I would carefully watch your tone and demeanour when talking about work and school.
Keep it light ,fun etc don't make it sound.deathly serious etc

Just give them access to books, music, life. Help them be curious and instil a love of exploration and learning. Not all dc can be super bright but they can all enjoy learning to their abilities and some will be better at things than others.

I agree with what @GentleIron says and @Sellenis we were a household that talked about what was happening so instead of passively watching tv we were encouraging them to think about the actions of people on screen and that included things like Peppa of Peppa Pig. This plays into comprehension when reading. It wasn't like some light shining in their face questioning, just well Peppa wasn't very nice to George was she and we would talk about what makes a good friend.

We also did lots of physical games, board games, cards in teams of one parent and one child, weighing things to bake with, counting money and by that I mean plastic coins start with 2p, then shove a 5p across the table, add that, push a 10p, add that. Number fluency is key.

Meeting expectations is great, there is nowhere to go in primary if you push them too far and they just get bored. Death by workbook or worksheet is not fun. "Focus on instilling curiosity, a love of learning and sense of pride in working hard, that's what makes kids successful at school and beyond." I think this in spades. What are they interested in? Look that up, show an interest. Feed curiosity and breed curiosity, there are opportunities all the time to look things up and Youtube is brilliant for looking at other countries, science, nature etc. Also get outside, learn from the environment you are in. Take them to parks and stately homes and talk about the people who lived there.

One of my children was average by the time year 6 SATs rolled round but you can never tell how a child will turn out from 11. It comes down to, themselves, their motivation, resilience, friendship group, teachers, parents, self control when it comes to tech/screen time and not all screen time is bad. Your influence only goes so far. My other child was full marks in year 6 SATs. They both came out with the same amazing GCSE results, both took 4 A levels including maths and further maths and excelled, both ended up at top 5 ranking universities for their course. They loved maths, I hated it at school but realised it was because I was missing huge chunks of foundational knowledge which became glaringly obvious when I was helping my children learn times tables. My children are also loving, kind, funny and helpful, have lovely friends and are great to be around.

My kids get lots of outstandings. We don't make a big deal of homework at all. I don’t make them read and then write something about it, as that would kill a love of reading IMO. We eat tea together every night, we talk about stuff, talk about what they’ve been learning about and bring our knowledge to it without dumbing that down. I’ve always spoken to them with a full range of vocabulary, I listen to them and let them speak. If they’re interested in something we’ll get them books about it or research info about it. I don’t make a big deal of tests. Encourage them to be proud of themselves and confident rather than seek external validation. Let them have lots of downtime and enjoy what they enjoy. My youngest who has just got greater depth of reading, writing and maths is currently watching utter crap on YouTube and will do that all morning I’m sure.

Its not something I really talk about as I know people are often annoyed by it, but since you asked. IMO it’s absolutely not making home an extension of school with a focus of homework, practising for tests, pressure to attain etc. We did no school prescribed home learning in lockdown for example. Just made sure the kids had a positive experience.

I imagine it helps that we’re both pretty smart too. But in an interested in the world way, curious, love knowledge and learning rather than a must attain and acquire way.

Why do you want them to fulfil the arbitrary category "Outstanding"? How will this help them?

Its worth knowing if they are struggling and you can then talk with the teacher about how they are tackling this, but otherwise then just chill and take them out to have some fun.

A big thing for me was understanding the way things are taught so being able to explain to my DC so they truly understood. It's all so different to what I remember. Personally with a big class with lots of children with SEN I feel helping outside of school is essential. I used a site called Twinkl which I think is used by teachers as well.

I think it's very easy to get a bit obsessed with this & it's only YR 2. I was very advanced in primary but it did level out when I went to secondary & honestly it's so much to do with motivation & effort as you get older.

The one thing that helped me is reading, my mum made me read before school & I read everything & anything. Hard to force though, one of mine doesn't like reading.

It also depends on the school. My dc are at a primary with a very high % of GD in yr 6 sats eg 35-40% each year. Some of this is the cohort (lots of immigrant parents & private tuition at home) but the school really pushes them from about yr 4.

Please bear in mind that there are European countries where a child has no formal learning at all till age 7, and they manage fine. But here you are worrying about getting Outstanding in everything. Makes no sense.

My children are adult now and I have observed different rates of development between them and at different times in them as individuals. They have fallow times and spurts - snapshots at a moment in time are meaningless. All my chidlren are happy well educated adults, but you would have suspected they would be very different at year 2 age - it all evened out over time.

We were there to help when asked - we read to them lots - we talked with them lots - we cooked and shared chores together. Never once did I ask whether they had homework to do at any age - they knew that was their work and just got on with it. They asked for help when needed and that was freely given. If the teacher had asked them to read to me, they would come and do it with me - job done.

Forget the testing.

Sure they do 🤔😆

And if it helps my dc In yr 4 was expected in maths & english & wt in writing. Their SAT scores were 116 or above in reading, maths & SPAG.

At home I really only focused on comprehension, I think lots of adults don't have great comprehension skills tbh. We used some of those word cards and some workbooks, not that often though. This might be controversial but I think TV shows can help with comprehension skills too so put the subtitles on.

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