I don't know what my child learns at school...

[Suzi7979]

Do any of you actually know what your Y1 child learns at school? The teacher never speaks to the parent, we haven't had parent evening yet and all parents wonder what the kids actually learns. The school is outstanding ( ofsted).

Just wanted to know if its normal to not know what the kids learn at school and which subjects they have each day?

Mumoftwoyoungkids DS1 is the same! I know what everyone brings in for snack in great detail, and who is "bossy", and who doesn't eat their vegetables at lunch. He's also very complimentary about the little boy who helps him do up his buttons after PE.

We get an email each week telling us what they will be doing the following week. But not a day by day breakdown.

Ours has just got DoJo which helps hugely as they upload pictures of the class work each week. We also on the school website have the year set out as terms and what they will do about.

Ds 5 offers different information depending on the day 🤣🙈 homework also tends to be related to what they are doing in class. It normally starts “this term we are learning about X’

I teach in Year 1. We send parents a lot of info. We do a Curriculum map each half term to let parents know what we will be covering. We also send a topic pack out, with more details on Humanities & Science. At the moment we can't talk to parents at the door, so we exchange some messages through Seesaw. We send photos of some of the work children are doing to parents on Seesaw. Our parents evenings are by phone after half term.

I feel bad for you, covid at primary school has cut you off to nearly the level of secondary school. At primary you could have a chat at the door and are encouraged to ask questions.

Since my eldest has been at secondary school (y8 now) I know NOTHING and it kills me 😬😬😬 do you have dojo or anything? X

I was hoping to get a weekly update not day to day basis. I see that I have had high expectation. How often do your Y1 child gets book changed in a week?

@Suzi7979

I was hoping to get a weekly update not day to day basis. I see that I have had high expectation. How often do your Y1 child gets book changed in a week?

My year 1 changes her book 2-3 times a week.

We get a one page each half term saying what topics they're doing etc. Since Covid the school have started posting on Facebook a lot so get photos of Ckass 1A enjoying their bug hunt or whatever.

I don't pay much attention to be honest!

The school don't have dojo or anything like that. We don't get any information at all. I understand the teachers and staff are under hard pressure but even a 14day update would have helped.

We get 2 books changed once a week. They are expected to read each book 3 times - second time for fluency and third time for comprehension. So that takes 6 evenings and the 7th is the day they take them away and replace.

Year 1: change books Monday, Wednesday and Friday. On Friday weekly spelling and maths test. 1 piece of homework every two weeks (either maths or English). Weekly update on what the children are covering. In class 3 levels of difficulty in all academic tasks, chilli 1, 2 and 3. Some kids straight to chilli 3 hardest, some start at 2 then do 3, some start at 1 etc.

Our school gives out 1 book weekly.

Ours send home a half-termly overview of topic, maths, English, science, RE and PE. We also get maths each week, and the principal's letter in the weekly newsletter calls out the best work sent to her, which indicates what the focus is.

I find one also has to ask very specific question of one's child: What is something new you learned today? Did you do group work? Did you do any learning outside/in the library? Did the teacher ask you to answer a question today? Who was your partner in maths?

That usually gives a clue to work from

Our school website under 'key information' or 'parents' has the curriculum plan for each year.

I used to do the 'what did you do today?' Game and got 'can't remember' every time so now I ask more random questions and usually get some information.

• did Ava say anything funny at lunch? Oh really, wow, what were you doing in class before lunch? Maths you say, hmm what kind of maths, ah yes I remember doing multiplication, that's the one where you take a number away isn't it? It's not, goodness, hmm, well what did you do after lunch then, oooo geography, that sounds exciting........

Or

• did you have an assembly this morning? No, oh I guess you all just sat staring at the wall or morning them right? You didn't, well what did you do?......

OP- email the headteacher and ask for weekly updates on what the kids are covering in class. Our school are constantly improving because they listen to feedback from parents, they did Zoom workshops this term instead of in person, explaining how phonics is taught in school/Sats etc . They have it on video so other parents can watch back. They understand full well that some parents will engage fully and will help their DC at home which actually makes the teacher’s job easier. End of year there is also a very involved handover from one teacher to next and parents are asked to write a letter beginning of the new term about their child. 30 plus kids in a class is a lot so good schools should do what they can to get parents involved (as much as those patents can- some can’t, others can).

I will wait for parent evening and ask then. Thanks for all the replies.

At nursery you get ( In my opinion) ridiculous amounts of info and then next to nothing at school , my daughter has only just started telling us what's she learning in year 3, I'm hoping by year 6 what she says might even be accurate and articulate?

The skill of a primary school teacher is to make it all seem like fun and play and often the learning objectives aren't rammed home

What does your child say that they do?

I get a blow by blow account of the day

Mine is year 1 and the only feedback I got from her last week was that she made a cardboard dragon and someone was sick in the classroom bin. Trying to find out what she's been learning about is like getting blood out of a stone.

Infant child books changed twice a week.

Used to be daily but returned books need to be quarantined now.

At the beginning of term there was a parents information evening setting out the topics for each half term.

But in terms of individual feedback, unless there is a problem, really only at termly parent evenings

The curriculum will be on their website.

Do you not do homework with your DC around their topic?

Do you not get a million emails from the school every day?

Does your DC school not have seesaw/purplemash/one of the other school apps that allow the teachers to spam you with all manner of nonsense at 9pm on a Sunday night?

Why should you? It's easy to Google National Curriculum. It's easy to find out what the general learning trajectory is. Dont please email teachers asking for a break down. They're under enough pressure.

We get a rough overview of the topics for school half term and quite regular presentations to parents to tell us what we need to be doing/supporting. My daughter is very chatty about what everyone else has done but doesn’t say much about what she has done. I know exactly who has been naughty, which children are good at certain things, what lunch was but she can’t tell me anything that she’s actually done because ‘oh I just don’t remember mummy’ bollocks can she not remember.

I had high expectations like you OP. I wondered what other schools did. Good to read this, looks like that's the norm. In my school as a child we had a diary to write down our homework for that day which was top up of what we did at school so parents had good idea what kids were learning everyday.
Oh well