Confused by call from school

[scorpiogirly]

So my daughter who is 7 just went back today in year 3.

I get a call half an hour before I'm due to collect her to ask me if it is okay if the teacher who helps out takes my dd in the mornings in a group of about 10 to do maths. Apparently not that she's going to be taught anything different, just taught slower. What the hell does this mean? It's her first day back and they have never said anything like this before and she has always seemed fine with maths.

They also always tend to have mixed classes. When I questioned it, apparently it is nothing to do with ability. But strangely, they have split two year 3 classes and 2 year 4 classes and mixed them together. Whats the point of that?

They’re on the ball OP. They’ve looked at performance over the break and identified your DC as needing extra support to be on track for High School. I fought for extra help for one of my DC at primary, would have been very grateful for what they’ve offered.

Why are you ‘raging’ about it? You should be grateful that the school is spending time and money on your child to give her extra support.

They will have used their data over the summer to make informed decisions about which children would benefit.

Calm down and don’t give the teachers grief.

Don’t ask for a meeting!! The teaching staff will be very busy at the start of term. Just let them get on with it.

A teacher should never be too busy to spend 5 mins talking to a parent when they’ve identified that their child needs some extra support.

As opposed to a shit Teaching Assistant? You’re very rude and obviously have no idea what type of people take up a variety of roles in education. Many TAs have teaching qualifications, degrees and years of experience.

Why are you ‘raging’ about it? You should be grateful that the school is spending time and money on your child to give her extra support.

Read the rest of the sentence, it must be a typo. She says she's glad the support is there. Maybe it was supposed to say /not/ raging about it. OP confirms in a later post that's not what she meant to type.

OP, have a chat with the teacher. It is a shame you weren't told before if your DD was struggling a bit. It may be some kind of make up the numbers exercise where your DD is actually doing fine, but they have 10 places in the extra help group and they think she'd benefit more than the next child.

In the words of Bart Simpson, "...so we're going to catch up to the others by going slower than them..."

It probably did.

But to stop parents overreacting, brooding on it over the Summer and making their kids do work at home, they probably thought they'd leave it until today.

All primary school work in core subjects is differentiated by ability.

Nope it is not as that limits what children can achieve. If the kids who were working below expected standard always only ever got work that was below expected standard how could they ever get to expected? The curriculum is set that all children have the same work and it get progressively harder. Each question is slightly more challenging than the previous one.

Work is differentiated only for those who are working significantly below.

Typically, the teacher teaches to the middle group of kids. The higher end get given extra/harder work and expected to teach themselves with a bit of extra help from the teacher if they need it.

This is not so. Teachers teach to all children at the same time. It is a ping pong method of teach a little, do a little, teach a little, do a little. The teacher circulates and works with different groups. The higher children do not get extra or harder work. They all get the same unless significantly below.

Those who take longer to grasp something often get a 'pre teach' they get 10-15 minutes before the lesson going over the concept so they have some understanding before the lesson begins.

You really think that’s how intervention works? Slotting random kids in because there’s a free space?

That’s good for your daughter to get extra help

This is just one anecdote from a long time ago but when my DS was in primary school it was suddenly suggested that he should have extra maths help in school, in addition to the regular lessons. Maths had never been raised as an issue before. I asked what he would be missing, the answer was art. I said no, I didn't want him to miss art, which he enjoyed, to do extra maths. He got an A at GCSE several years later (A being the second to highest grade at that time).

It’s weird they’ve asked and on day 1, but it’s normal. My Y3 is in one for reading. It’s just a smaller group with more support. No one ever asked permission though, just informed us at parents evening.

@scorpiogirly - "... If I had known we could have worked on it over the holidays."

She's only just started year 3.

Perhaps the school thought it would be better for her to enjoy the summer holiday rather than be coached in maths?

Op you did nothing with her over the last 6 weeks

Many parents of a 7 yr old over the summer break would have done something over the past 6 weeks. I was no tiger mum but at this age… over the long summer break, yes we regularly did maths and reading.

My point is… it’s not surprising if she’s done nothing for 6 weeks that she may have been quite obviously below the pace that 2/3s of the class have demonstrated early on

Haha, the amount of conflicting info and advice on this thread 😂

Speak to the teacher op, and ask for more info

My daughter had this once in Y4 as she was slipping from greater depth to meeting expectation and they wanted to keep her in the higher level.
Edited to say presume she had sats at the end of Y2 so perhaps just at the lower end of her grade so they want to focus on it

Really? I’ve never done any formal work with my primary aged children over the holidays. Both got Greater Depth across the board in KS2 SATs. Holidays were for playing/chilling.

Remember that there will always be a 'first time' parents hear this type of thing. It's not really helpful to be annoyed about why you haven't heard it before.

There will have been grouping, assessing and planning over the holidays and clearly, they have noticed that your DD could do with some extra help. There is a BIG divide often between Y2 and Y3 - what is acceptable at end of Y2 is often a big jump away from Y3 standard. I would have some faith that the Y3 team know what they are doing. Be thankful that they have picked something up and are able to address it to support your DD.

Haha hahahaha that's batshit advice.

Where is the “advice” ?

im explaining a possible reason why not mentioned 6 weeks ago 🤷‍♀️

So I would assume the mixed classes is because they have say 45 children in year 3 and 45 children in year 4. So they have mixed the classes in order to have maximum children to teacher ratio.

This has then resulted in there being year 4 kids in your DD’s class that due to their age are much quicker at maths. Teaching a subject like maths where the teacher tends to work at the pace of the slowest children is now causing an issue in the mixed class for the year 4’s.

The fix has been to take the year 3 kids out and teach them at a pace that suits them. This would also explain why your DD’s maths ability has never been raised with you before. Because, for her age, her maths is fine.

Nothing has been mentioned about ARE. In fact, I have never heard them mention this. Every report or interaction has been that she's doing great. Nothing to report. This is why I'm a little concerned.

The mixed classes that seem to be a thing in this school though and I'm not sure why they do it. For instance, in year one, half of her class was mixed with Yr 2. Year 2. Her class was mixed with year 1. And now 2 year 3 classes are mixed with year 4.