school has surprised me!

[blackeyedsusan]

last week I asked for harder words to read... one (or more) groups have been given spellings!

I also asked for more challenging books as the yellow band books were a "little easy." given that we are reading easy chapter books at home they have put her up one band. I am shocked as we normally play a little game every couple of months where I say the books arer too easy and they ignore me and we carry on doing our own thing in our own happy way. once pmt has passed

ok so she could spell the words first time at home and green band is not a big leap, but i do not know whether she will cope with spelling in a test and at least the green band books are a little harder and we can get something out of it now. she has been asked to practice adding numbers in the teens as she doesn't use the number line to count on. (tends to do these things in her head) well we have practised and introduced a strategy of using number bonds of single digit numbers to check teens+ addition (ie if 2 and 4 =6 then 12+4=16 and 22+4=26 etc) doubt that will go down well! I hope she talks about her strategy at school.

I think I want to push for more, but not until she has had time to try out/prove herself for another month or so. (after all she might go to pieces under test conditions and we have a lot of work to do on handwriting) anyone fancy sitting on me and administering the duct tape for the next month?

(disclaimer, i know she is not doing some of the stuff other really bright children do at this age, though she is the top end of normal and I post mainly because i as fed up of the lack of progress ith reading in school compared to home)

ps, sorry about the lack of capitals, intermittent shift key!

She mentioned something about a pen licence too. What on earth is it???

Only time I've heard the term 'pen license' is referring to in-school incentives to getting children from using pencil to pen - so they 'earn' their license and are allowed to use a pen. Different schools operate in different ways. If that is what is meant the teacher should be able to explain it.

yes I think thats what it is.

It was only mentioned in passing in context with something else.

Ds's school is having a massive drive on handwriting (apparently yr6s writing is shocking) so this must be it.

duct tape and sitting on required. agggggggggggghhhhhh children!

oh no.

What has happened???

DD is being assessed tomorrow to see how far ahead she is WRT reading.

You were told your DD will be assessed tomorrow?Surprise!

This is DD (4) not DS (yr2) who is already on G&T

DD is in nursery linked to the school. Have no idea whether she is G&T or not tbh, I guess its too early to tell although she is reading proper books etc at home while other kids are learning letters etc but that does not mean much at this stage.

They are going to give her some sentences to read (all basic phonics stuff) to see how she gets on.

oo simpson. it is too early to tell, i suppose, but it could be one of the parts of the jigsaw that gives you the information, eventually.

when did she turn four? (dd was in school at 4 as she is youngest in year and was reading proper but really easy books at home)

dd has been moved down a maths group. she lacks confidence and sometimes has the sillies and can't do a thing with maths. it is all very confusing. has she learnt some tricks but can't apply them or does she sometimes mess around. she is either tricking me or the teacher.

They are going to assess ds1 using higher grades past papers to see where to move him to for maths. I am hoping it won't be his sister's class...

And dd1 started her mentor's programme last week. Her mentor is lovely - dd1 got to sit in on surgery on Monday and had a dizzy spell they were all great and said half the time it happens because if you aren't used to wearing a mask you tend to hyperventilate...

Dd2 is driving me crazy. The ils have been here for 6 weeks and left today, so she is grumpy beyond belief.

Will read and catch up! Hope all ok.

grrr on the moving down a group for maths.

It reminds me of DS and his reading, he lacked confidence and was a bit scared of the teacher to answer questions properly (he thought he would get the answer wrong) so she thought he was not as good as he is iyswim.

He was also bullied earlier on in the year for being "brainy"

Luckily he seems to have grown in confidence and has now got KS2 books, finally, although still too easy IMO but a major step forward!!

DD was 4 last weekend and tbh I have only done some blending/reading with her for 3wks and she has progressed to reading books etc in that time. She can only do basic books phonetically ie no sh, ch sounds yet but considering 3wks ago she could not read (and we have only been doing 5mins a day) its amazing.

I have always thought she is more gifted than her brother tbh but was in fear of putting it on here

OFBE - thats fab news on the assessment

Is it common for nurseries attached to schools to refuse to give reading books btw??

DD's teacher said she will give 15mins a day to giving her one to one help/teaching etc which is fab. She said today out of 70 kids in morning and afternoon nursery there are only 2 kids that can read properly (DD is one of them - but will be assessed tomorrow hopefully to see where she is).

Forgot to say DS started full time school at 4 yrs and 2wks and could not read and did not get a reading book till feb and still finished yrR ahead (level 5ORT) although not alarmingly ahead iyswim.

Really common for nurseries not to give reading books. Dd2 was reading fluently way before school, but nursery explained that the policy was not to formally start reading prior to yr r. So she just read books at home. When she started yr r I was quite relaxed about it (she was dc3 so I know how many parents fetch up to yr r with a child claiming they are the next Einstein and how much notice teachers take of it .) so she just settled in and they did the usual reading assessments after a couple of weeks and sorted her out. It wasn't a biggie, tbh. She would just go up to y2 and get books from the free reading shelf. The only person who got excited about it was a stalker mum who used to limpet herself to me in the playground to check what she was reading so that she could go and try it on her son. and the only reason she knew that she was a free reader was because she helped out in the class and had seen the TA take dd2 off to y2. Dd2 was assessed with a reading and comprehension age of 12 when she was tested in the may of yr r. I didn't mention that to the stalker

The math thing is interesting. Ds1's report measured him above 99.9th centile or whatever it is for math problem solving, but he still gets really easy stuff wrong. The psych thinks it's to do with his head being over-occupied with what comes next, and because he thinks it's reasonably simple he doesn't concentrate on it. And his attention issues, of course, so he's got a lot going on in his wee head! He's just started a meds trial, so it will be interesting to see what happens next. I don't think it's uncommon for kids to lose concentration because they have such a rich inner world that is whirring away whilst the teacher tries to get them to do math that they could do at 3. Ds just zones out. School are being quite good at trying to get the balance between challenging him and making sure he knows he needs to put some effort in.

I still think he's an ideal candidate for he, but I'm willing to give them some rope and see what they do with him now he's all tested up.

Dd2 is the brightest of mine. She's also the most sensitive, although it's ds that has the anxiety. Dd2 just gets upset. She's a real heart on her sleeve girl. Dd1 is the quiet but steady one. She's bound to be pg at 14.

dd startrted school at 4.1 so she is just about the same age as some were when starting reception.

it is amazing what happens when it clicks. at home dd went from just into yellow band 3 at the start of reception (hens pens, usborrne phonics readers) to white band 10 at the end of reception. in school, she started on words, then read every pink book, then worked her waythrough an awful lot of red band books and started year one on red band books, which were easier than the books she was able to read when she entered school.

mwita/oobe I feel like copying and pasting part of your post about maths, enlarging it and laminating it and presenting it ot the teacherr.

Simpson; nursery for my son did not give out books or have letter of the week etc. They had lots of lovely art work/games lessons/music/trips out/lots of playareas/writing and drawing areas/access to books (but not to take home) and they chose what they wanted to do. They had story and song time so that was good for preparing them for listening and sitting still(ish) for school. The nursery was attached to his school.

I have no problem with the nursery not giving out reading books btw as they say that they have to make sure a child can blend properly etc which is fair enough, its just that the school does seem to have some bonkers "policies" and as soon as I heard that its school policy not give reading books in nursery I thought I would check what other nurseries do iyswim.

She does get an ORT book once a wk with just pictures to "read" every week.

DD did not have her assessment today as she was not well enough but hopefully she should have it tomorrow.

I always thought it was quite common for kids to be reading in nursery (maybe I am on MN too much )but the way DD's teacher talked about it she said it was quite rare

depends though whether the children in question are september borns o august borns. it used to be more common as children stayed in nursery longer, but now the new foundation year is in place then children now tend to have a full year in school, leaving a younger cohort in nursery.

Bes, the Mathis thing is so tricky. I retread your op, and they probably are quite similar ( he's obv a bit older). Right from yr r the teachers wanted him to show his workings out and he's never been able to understand why. As far as he's concerned, he gets the answer, end of. Now that he's doing stuff that's obv trickier, he does use paper for his workings out, but no mortal alive can decipher it... . The psych said in the end she was just willing him to make a mistake, because she thought she was going to run out of assessment time (one of those go as far as you can tests, stop when you get something wrong). He just used one piece of paper for all of his workings out though - and not in an ordered fashion, he was literally scribbling teeny stuff in any space on the paper. She kept asking him if he wanted another sheet and he kept saying 'I've got a space here' and filling in another teeny gap.

As a visual explanation of what goes on in his head, it was illuminating! No way would he have got any marks in a school test for workings out though. we found it really interesting that in that environment, he made no mistakes at all (the qs were obv getting progressively harder) but he makes simple errors all the time with his homework.

I think nurseries don't know that kids can read, because it doesn't occur to them to find out, and they aren't in any way qualified to assess reading or teach it! Most yr r classes have a few v confident readers start every year, with some more who have some reading skills. I'm pretty certain if you asked their nurserys, the staff wouldn't know. Dd2 was reading CSLewis, but as far as nurserys were concerned they didn't do reading so I don't think we even mentioned it! They had a letter of the week, but no reading. She went there for socialization etc rather than 'teaching'. That sounds really pompous, but it's sort of a statement of fact - as she has cp it was a time where she needed to be with her peer group, and working on social skills. Not unusual for kids with cp to be v isolated, etc. it also gave a good comparison with peers for support requirements once she got to school, etc. and prevented her from becoming overly dependent. Lots of reasons, but not learning. In hindsight, that sounds a bit weird...

Really weird autocorrects in that post. Apols, hope it makes sense...

Has anyone got a child in yr1????

I went to a phonics thing the HT was doing at DC school today and she mentioned there is a new assessment happening at the end of yr1 now (don't know if it is starting this yr though) to assess whether a child can blend letters together properly ie by getting them to blend letters that don't make up a "real" word ie F U D or something

She did not seem to happy about it tbh and actively encouraged us to write and complain about it...

oops too happy about it....

Don't see any point complaining. It's just a list of words that Y1 children have to read (in June). Some are real words and some are made up, and need to be read phonetically. No big deal.

there are threads about it on the primary education board.

it seeems that sometime toward the end of year one there will be a test where childen are expected to read 20 (?) made up words and 20 (?) real wods using phonics skills.

childrenwill supposedly be 6 when taking this test. yeh right! 1/3 of dd's class will be 5, (6 august bithdays and another 4 late july) possibly half the class wwill still be 5 if the test is in may.

I think your head teacher is worried, have they been doing phonics teaching?

I am not going to complain myself Don;t see the point, nor do I want to.

DS is in yr2 anyway so a bit pointless

Just suprised HT suggested it iyswim. Although some of the things she said were a bit anyway ie if a child (nursery age) asked what a question mark was (in a book they were looking at/reading) then they are not ready for books to read themselves (WTF)

oh dear. shame that. dd asked, oh and she was eading simple books. couldn't have been ready after all. I would have been tempted to ask which peer reviewed esearch she was using to support her arguments. but then that may have got me thrownout.