Reception and differentiation - your survival strategies please!

[onesandwichshort]

Hello, me again.

The situation in short is that DD is in reception with a reading age several years above that and good writing ability too. School have promised some extra sessions for her, but these keep falling by the wayside because the teacher's sick/it's the nativity play/there's a new boy with SEN. And so on, until she has probably had 2 sessions this whole term.

It won't get better, either, as they've had a trainee teacher for this term, but he's leaving at Christmas. Plus her teacher is also the SENCO so we can't really appeal to a higher authority.

DD herself is losing her enthusiasm for school, and is also starting to hide what she can do in order to fit in. While at home she will - of her own choice - sit down and write a poem or read factual as well as fiction books. She'd fly, I'm sure, if school would only give her the opportunity.

We spoke to the NAGC, and one of the things that they said was that reception is really hard for gifted children. Because of the way it is structured, schools do find it difficult to differentiate, and basically implied that we'd just have to put up with it for the next two terms.

Is this true? Or can some schools do it better? And if so, how? We have another meeting with the teacher on Thu, but I don't know how much we can ask for, or what. I would like to take DD out for some time to flexi-school her at home, but DH doesn't think this is a good idea.

Thankfully our HT seems to take the lead from the teachers re: this kind of thing. DS1 is definitely best with his year group at the moment apart from for some aspects of literacy where he can't be placed within class i.e. guided reading and stuff.

I'm so hopeful that he'll be fine where he is. DD at same school and - well, when everything seemed to be going wrong I did a ring round of local schools and couldn't find any with yr 1 places, private or state, that would have been an improvement. Primaries tend to be heavily oversubscribed here, and with the infant class size prejudice, there isn't much scope apart from if you get really lucky. Also, fundamentally ds1 is happy - he has friends who he can storm around the playground with, and doesn't seem to mind current set up. Helps that is only really one area where he excels - so haven't had to contemplate complete movement up a year (not that that would make a difference for him really). He is the oldest in the year incidentally.

Well, the meeting wasn't at all what we'd expected today. They'd clearly noticed some of the problems that we wanted to talk about, so her teacher had called in the g&t co-ordinator (who's also the deputy head) and things have now ramped up a bit. So she's going to do differentiated work by starting her on Read Write Inc, they're going to create her own book box and order books in from outside, and they want to stretch her at maths too.

I'm really quite impressed, because all of this has happened without us having to say our piece at all. And we stressed that this work needed to be regular - because DD noticed when it wasn't happening - and they took that on board too. So it all starts on Monday. Blimey.

Rue - I agree about that kind of open-ended work, it means that everyone can take part at their own level. From what I can gather, DD's school do more of that kind of thing from Year 1 onwards.

Pooka - we're in the same boat. I can't see that any of the other schools would do any better, and we did want her to go to a local school and have local friends. We did even look at the local private prep, but all they kept saying was 'well we have much smaller classes' as if that solved all differentiation problems.

Madwoman - I agree with you about writing off some parts of school and was prepared to let dd coast in reception. But it was when she started going backwards and being a bit unhappy that we decided to push a bit. And I asked dd about the writing table and apparently it has stuff all over it at the moment (we'd run out of time to do something at home and I suggested she could do it at school...). They're not the most organised reception class in the world.

unhappy is never good. glad it's worked out x

Madwoman, I apologise for being really dense, but what is cp?

DD was to busy trying to be like the other kids to sit and write even with all the material provided - she used to spend all day playing what the other kids wanted to play. Teach didn't think she was any good at maths til I pointed out that she is busy trying to be like everyone else and doesn't want to be singled out all the time.

On a couple of occasions we have refused to do silly homework - like re-writing the alphabet in upper and lower case for the seven millionth time - but mostly we just play along now and do our own thing at home.

oh, cerebral palsy. sorry! (not dense, i just get lazy about typing it all out)

she's just a regular kid, but because she speaks funny and walks and runs funny, the other kids are a bit wary. that on top of the fact she is on a different wavelength wrt academics means she doesn't really have close peer group friends. school are doing their best though.

Surely practising handwriting can only be a good thing? Likewise with sentences, she could use them to write stories or make them more interesting by using moire varied vocabulary?

I'm very surprised that other little girls in her class don't like to draw & write - in my experience of reception/y1 children there is always a group who does.

Instead of thinking about "coasting" in reception, think of it as a bonus that she can do things so easily that she can put more energy into settling into school & making friends. Most kids are pretty tired at the end of six hours of school & to then struggle to learn the required words, sounds etc is added pressure.

they are ordering books in! wow! they are giving her work! double wow!

you are quite lucky to have stuff this early in the year in reception, though it probably seems ages to you. they have noticed. they are on the case, even if they are not completely there yet. it is looking promising. lets hope that they keep it up!

bes - yes I am also very surprised!

But what's most pleasing is that they've done it off their own bat, without us having to nag. They're also insisting that they differentiate for maths, even though we didn't mention that at all. All of which gives me hope that it will happen, because it comes from them not us.

Racheal - I agree about the not writing because of fitting in. What also seems to have happened with DD is that she gets all of her 'playing' out of her system at school, then comes home and does all of the reading and writing instead!

RedHelen - that was going to be my attitude, and it worked fine for the first half term. But for a whole host of reasons, slightly more complicated than boredom but including seeing other children praised for doing things she could already do, perfectionism and an intense shyness which meant she didn't cause a fuss and get noticed, she was starting to disengage from school and was losing the enthusiasm she had. And I think that's a fair assessment, as it's what school had noticed too.

Apologies I haven't read the rest of the thread but just wanted to share my experience. My daughter is in Reception also and ahead of alot of the children in her class in reading and writing. Fortunately she is not the only one. Along with a child from her class and two from another (3 year R classes at her school) they are taken out of class 2 or 3 times a week during literacy time and given work that stretches them. This just started after half term, the first couple of weeks they appeared to be learning (according to dd) about expression when reading and the last couple of weeks have been how to add 'interest' when writing, using adjectives, speech marks etc. It is most definitely her favourite part of the week apart from games but I am also lucky that she quite enjoys all the basic phonics lessons as well even though she knows alot of it.

Talking generally rather than anyone's specific DCs mentioned here, I think reception teachers have a broader view of what is "clever" than teachers further up the school where the focus becomes more academic. A child with a high reading age is not necessarily very imaginative. A child who is good at calculation is not necessarily a good lateral thinker. It is possible for a child who can neither read nor recognise numbers to be a brilliant problem solver and creative thinker. It's very sad that beyond EYFS school has so little capacity to recognise gifts other than reading, writing and calculating.