Had my year 5 DS parents evening last night. Lovely boy, behaviour fine, he's a bit of a live wire but thankfully that's not viewed negatively.
He's always been 'working towards', and I've not been too worried as my older child was the same but is now doing really well in secondary.
Teachers feel he does less well in tests than in class work, and that he rushes and doesn't read instructions properly etc., which is what I see at home.
The problem is when I speak to him about it, he just doesn't care. For example when I ask why he doesn't use full stops when he knows perfectly well how to he said he didn't care about full stops and then started going on about designing a new way to know when sentences have finished!
Even as I'm writing this, I can see he sounds just like me at that age. I was totally disengaged with school work. Sadly I was seen as lazy and a trouble maker. I did well in the end (have a PhD) but not until I left school.
I would like to save him the trouble I had to go through to carve my own path later in life, but I'm not sure how.
My parents didn't make a big deal out of my academic failure, so I didn't feel my worth was defined by that, which was good. However, they could have helped me much more at home. But if I try to do extra work with him at home it's such a battle.
Any tips on how to motivate this child. He comes across as very bright, but it's just not coming out at school!