Year 1 DD is behind in her report

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She was alright in reception - the jump to year 1 has been quite big for her.

whereas in reception she was even a bit ahead in reading, she’s now emerging. She’s on orange books in RWI.

her writing was at expected level in reception but has slipped to emerging as well. Her writing is improving, but she’s definitely behind a lot of her peers. As became apparent to me in the Christmas cards we’ve received. She can do it, she just needs a lot of support.

any positive stories of how kids like this can catch up ? I think her verbal reasoning and that kind of thing is fine and not behind her peers. I’ve run her report through chat gpt and it said that it the ideas and understanding are there, but there’s a slight execution bottle neck that she’ll get through with practice and a bit of time.

the teachers praise her effort and say she’s improving, which I can also see.

if there were ‘ serious concerns ‘ the teachers may have mentioned it, right ?

any experiences welcome. I’m not extremely concerned at this point yet, but just wondering how I can help her along. I really do see her trying and she’s improving.

I think the key thing is that yes, while she may catch up of her own accord, she may also continue to slip behind the others and lose confidence. How much do you do with her at home with regards to her reading to you and pen control? Ten mins of reading to you every single day will make a big difference. For writing it doesn't necessarily have to be letters - hand strength from play dough, practising correct pen hold, and drawing anything she is interested in will help.

Do check how the school is reporting before you get overly concerned. Many schools give a mid- year report which assesses where the children are against the end-of-year expectations. Therefore it’s entirely normal at this point of the year to be emerging or developing, because you’ve still got two terms to go.

Bless you, but it's Y1. Kids go through different development stages, sometimes speeding up sometimes slowing down.

Absolutely nothing to worry about - the thing to look at is her attitude to school/learning. Is she attentive? Does she try? That's all you can ask of her.

The way my DCs primary school worked was the "expected" grade was where they were expected to be at the end of the year. So since their only 1/3 of the way through, "emerging" would be where they expect them to be at this point in the year.

But in any case, you can support her reading by getting her to read to you for 5 to 10 minutes every day. Make it a pleasent experience, and a routine. We used to get in from school, then sit down and read with a biscuit and glass of milk. Also read longer books to her every day, a chapter or so at bedtime or whatever. Talk about what's happening, what you think will happen next, what the character might feel or think. etc

Support her writing by improving her hand strength. Get her using play dough, plasticine, cutting thing with scissors, threading beads to make bracelets, digging in the garden. That will make it easier for her to hold her pencil, coordinatation and will improve her handwriting. And support her with practicing spelling. Just do a few minutes a day. In the car on the way home from where ever

Also, kids learn very much at their own pace. In some countries she wouldn't even be IN formal school at this age, as they're not considered ready.

Trying to squash more learning in when she's just not ready for it won't help - kids don't learn in a linear way like adults do, it's much more intuitive at that age. Just give her time and space and it will come right.

How can I find out if they’re grading them based on where they should be at the end of the year ? I don’t know. I guess I could ask. We do reading at home. She was never behind before this term, for reading or writing.

writing we do every week as well to do her homework.

we’ve written a lot of Christmas cards the last few days. She absolutely loves writing, so just does that every day anyway. When you leave her to it, it’s hard to read though. You need to watch over her and support her/ remind her, for it to be legible.

her reading comprehension is very good. When reading books and asking her questions about it, it’s amazing how she’s able to summarise what’s happened.

She holds the pen really well, it’s more spelling and remembering the right way to form letters. But again, I see a massive improvement since September.

she struggles with her attention span at school, but her class input / effort / friendships / following the rules is spot on apparently.

If she's dropped suddenly and you don't understand with the reading I'd ask her teacher.

Re. the writing, we struggled a lot with DD's writing in Yr1, she just wrote too fast (trying to keep up with her head) so was pretty illegible. We did lots of hand coordination activity to strengthen her hands, so bead threading, stitching etc... as well as handwriting books to help guide her letters. There's been so much improvement into Yr2 it's night and day.

She tries. Her attention span isn’t the best. But the teachers say she’s trying hard at everything. We also definitely put in the work at home with her.

I may ask the teacher. Because she was always expected or just about exceeding for reading with zero issues. She picked up phonics well.

it might just be that other kids have had more of a fluency breakthrough and she’s still not had that quite yet. To me, her reading has improved so much. She recognises so many words now compared to before. She doesn’t need to sound as many words out as before.

but I guess the expectation is even greater than her improvement.

and yes my DD also has a habit of writing too fast. But the last few days, I’ve really worked with her to slow down and I feel like some things are clicking.

I'm surprised because everything I can find says Orange is the top end of expected for Y1?

I wouldn't be overly concerned at the moment, but you could speak to the teacher to ask about grading. It's great she likes writing and if she can keep that up she'll improve. I think the biggest thing I did for my 2 DS was to sit with them while they read to me (or DH) every night. Just 10-15 mins a day (but every day) will really pay off.

Yeah I don’t know why it’s considered behind. I thought she’d be at expected level at least. She finished reception on pink. I think it must just be that a lot of children in her class are way above her level ?

some of the Christmas cards I received were incredibly well written for 5-6 year olds.

others were simple to hers. I think a lot of kids in her class can read proper books now. So orange books must be behind. Why else would she be marked as emerging.

It doesn't sound right at all. My DD is Y1. The school has a silly rule where all the children are on the same book band and they are currently on Green which is the expected level for this point in Y1.

There's always a possibility that the better written christmas cards were the work of an older sibling or parent!
But try not to compare. No good comes of it

@KittyFinlayoh ok. On RWI ? Are you sure ? my DD was on green books spring term of reception.

My DS, August baby, was behind (they called it "working towards") until a couple of years into junior school. Then he started to care a bit more about his learning, wanted to do well rather than the minimum. Top 10% or so in his year 6 SATs. We are glad that we didn't push him prior to that, potentially making school work feel like a chore.

Yeah it’s just that the level was so far above. It looked like it had been written by an adult.

there were other cards where you could see it was written by a child who was clearly ‘ better ‘, but still a child. But a couple were literally almost as good as an adult and that shocked me a bit !

I’m a much older mum and thirty years ago my youngest son wouldn’t pick up a pencil until year 2. Luckily he had a very experienced teacher who said don’t worry they are all different. Suddenly unprompted he decided he would do it and had caught up within 2 months with his classmates and exceeded both his sisters academically by the time he left school who had both been writing since reception. Give her time

That’s great. You know I’m glad my DD isn’t finding things a complete breeze to be honest. In my opinion it’s good that she needs to put some effort in and it’s paying off.

everything came very easily to me at that age and I struggled later on, because I had no clue how to actually try hard at stuff !

This teacher may be tougher than the previous one. If a child is borderline, I always go up as I think being positive is always far more encouraging. Other teachers go down.

If you want to improve reading do lots of it at home. If you read some and she reads some you get through the stories faster and she can study the pictures while you are reading your bit. It makes it more interesting.

Yes, I'm sure- she is on Big Cat not RWI but Green is the same for both and is Level 5, half way through Y1. https://www.badgerlearning.co.uk/a-guide-to-book-bands

Hi OP, teacher here! I have taught Year 1 for many years! For a child to achieve GLD at the end of Reception and then struggle in Year 1 is quite common. The outcomes for KS1 are very different - but keep perspective, your daughter has only just started the KS1 curriculum. The summative assessment for Year 1 is the phonics screening check in the summer term - reading every day with your daughter will build her fluency and comprehension skills. It is a fact that children all develop at different rates - some children keep pace with the National Curriculum and some need more support. Try not to worry - your daughter is still very young.

The only thing I can think is that they are not using a point in time assessment and instead grading them on if it were the end of year 1 now. Then it would make sense for most of the class to be emerging as there are still two terms of work to cover. Orange for RWI is definitely expected standard though.

So if orange is expected, I wonder why she’s emerging for reading. Strange !