What should my school be offering?

[kistigger]

Sorry long post, bear with me!

DD is Y1, in an infants only school, on the G&T register for Numeracy and Literacy. She on the top table for literacy, numeracy, phonics and reading comprehension. So as far as I can see they are offering the maximum without inconveniencing themselves! Not sure how far ahead DD is, I simply know it is significantly further ahead than her peers!

-G&T in her school means she goes out of lessons for 15mins for each once a week if the teacher is available (no group the last 2 weeks) to do an extended learning activity (which invariably isn't difficult!).
-Most her group learning has little/no challenge.
-They refuse to give her additional/harder work or homework on grounds that if she gets it other parents will want it too!
-She has to sit through all class activities, no matter how easy they are, and complete them before she is allowed extra challenge/draw.
-She has just started choosing her own books up after I suggested it may help with her wanting to do home reading (3 football books in a row = disheartening).

She is crying/not getting dressed each morning and says the work is too easy.
She is a slow writer and doesn't want to finish ahead of her friends so often doesn't get the challenge she needs. Also she doesn't like the other children calling her the 'cleverest one' and is fed of the school using her as an exhibition piece to the rest of her class. I understand her writing needs to be improved, particularly in terms of speed but that should not be an excuse to only give her the easy work.

What should I realistically be expecting them to do for her?
Should I be offering them more suggestions? If so what?
Should I keep harassing them in the hope they finally do something more?
What does your school offer?

Well, she's only y1, so I wouldn't expect a lot more than you are getting, really, if I'm completely honest. Tricky without knowing how far ahead academically, as well. And if she still needs a lot of time and effort for writing, then that makes it al, trickier. (believe me, I know. Dd2 falls into the HG range but has cerebral palsy. We were told at one point that she couldn't access the g&t programme because of her handwriting)

Honestly, if they have sorted the reading out, (it's always trickier in an infant school, dd2 was reading well before she started so had already outstripped the reading scheme) and they are doing some extension work with her, and she does need to catch up in certain areas (eg handwriting) then they are probably fulfilling their obligations literally.

All kids are expected to do all the classroom work tbh. And then be given extension work if appropriate. It nearly ds1 to have to sit through stuff that he doesn't want to do, is way too easy, and he isn't remotely interested in, but tbh, if we intend to keep them in the school environment, that's the way it goes. A large percentage of school is sucking it up and going through the motions and learning to do as you're told. we are contemplating he for ds1. It isn't necessary for the girls as they are far more compliant (and actually more 'gifted' in a testable sense) but he's quirkier.

A lot of yr 1 kids find it tricksy after all the play of yr r and nursery to make the transition to a more, um, boring traditional academic routine. It's part and parcel of yr 1.

School do seem a bit crapola though, but it's a lot more differentiation than you'll get in a lot of schools.

Infant schools are always tricksy, just because of the lack of curriculum materials avail past ks1.

Realistically, whatever you intend to do about it now, I doubt anything will happen. From April all anyone thinks about is the end of term.

I would watch and wait and see what September brings with y2.

If you wanted to be proactive and gat a realistic idea of capabilities, you could fork out for a private assessment. There's no real need, and early testing can be a bit ambiguous, but it might give you an accurate picture of where she falls.

I would do lots of writing with her over the holidays though. Particularly if she's age appropriate in this area but ahead in others. I think I would be not encouraging her with the dramatics, but would keep suggesting she tried really hard to finish her written work so that she could get on with something more interesting. No-one is going to tell her she can move ahead if she hasn't mastered that bit...

madwomanintheattic DD didn't find the transition a problem, she wanted more academic stimulation all of reception but I let it slide because I thought it was important for her to make friends in her new school etc. In terms of differentiation in the classroom, I think it is minimal in terms of they have one table of underachievers who get something fractionally easier, 3 tables of average children and one table or higher achievers who sometimes get something fractionally more difficult - so for numeracy this means the difference between working with numbers up to 10, 20 or 30 respectively, working on reading comprehension for levels 3-6 and that is about it! DD can manipulate numbers in their thousands and has completed ORT level 11, so reading comprehension on a book at level 6 is hardly what you would call a challenge (she may not understand absolutely everything she reads but her comprehension is not that bad)!!

I am considering HE, DH unconvinced by the idea! In terms of how far ahead, it is difficult to judge because we have not followed the curriculum in the strictest sense but she does attempt DS y4 maths homework and actually gets as much correct as ds and more so if I help with any concepts/areas she has not yet learned! Her reading books are not much different to his either, though she is more capable of working out unknown words than he is while he has had more opportunity to encounter more words due to being reading longer etc! As far as I can tell DS is approximately mid to top of his class for all his subjects and I think DD would realistically do better in his class than in her own! She has good social skills too! Your dd2 sounds like she is doing really well adapting her physical disabilities, it's great that the school have allowed her to use a laptop etc to help her with her work!

Does anyone have some suggestions for good writing activities??

I love the diaries. Buy the half page lined notebooks. She can draw a pic or stick stuff in of her day at the top, and then write either half a page, two pages, three pages, or whatever about what she has done that day. Absolutely standard yr 1 work that they can extend as far as they want to. And it makes a great keepsake for you

I didn't really mean transition to the academic side - I really meant transition to the more boring 'sit here Nd do this pointless piece of work' if I'm honest. Some kids struggle with the academics. Others struggle with the simple and pointless nature of the curriculum.

They are just letting her access books from y2 though? Like I said, reading schemes are a bit pointless when they are strong readers. Just encourage her to read whatever she likes at home, and make sure you get to the library often. Books cost a blooming fortune!

Dd2 is dc3, and the other two are also gifted, so she gets plenty of stimulation from just being around them.

I would chat to school (ds1 went up to y2 for maths) but tbh in an infant school the options are pretty limited. We were lucky in that they also ran a by invitation only percussion club for the brighter kids. It was just a sideways extension activity, and meant nothing in the long run, but at least it got them out of the class for a bit.

Academics-wise. Not a lot, tbh.

I'm amazed you know so much about the differentiation and abilities of the class! Why not get her to concentrate on the things she finds difficult for now like writing more quickly. What does she say about the majority of the day's activities when they are not doing numeracy and literacy?

'She is a slow writer and doesn't want to finish ahead of her friends so often doesn't get the challenge she needs. '

How can the teacher 'challenge' a child who is not writing very much? The challenge is in the task the teacher has set. If your child refuses to complete the task properly, it's hardly going to demonstrate her giftedness.

It sounds to me like she doesn't like writing.... at all.

'Should I be offering them more suggestions? If so what?
Should I keep harassing them in the hope they finally do something more?'

What ??? Yeah, just go and tell the teacher what to do, why don't you?That will go down well.

In literacy, particularly, differentiation in many tasks (e.g. creative writing, labelling) is by outcome, where a teacher will be expecting a higher level of writing from the more able child, with the same input.

madwomanintheattic 'struggling with the simple and pointless nature of the curriculum' ... sounds much more like it!! She has no access to any higher level materials from the Y2 classes, the reading books for the entire school are banded, after stage 11 they are coloured, so she is simply accessing the next available ones, she is just allowed to choose something out the box now! She reads whatever she wants at home and we get loads from the library, but I do like her to enjoy the books from school especially when they are so insistent that you do actually read them!!

LeeCoakley DD is very good at explaining how the class works, plus I went in DS class one morning a week in Y1 so I have a good idea of what is going on, which I confirm with one of the other parents who is an unpaid TA for DD class. School tells us virtually nothing. When the class is not doing Numeracy, Literacy, Phonics, PE or sitting in assembly, is, tbh, not very long and I think generally taken up with topic work - they've been doing seasons and I think if she was allowed to go read a book and find out some deeper level stuff she would probably enjoy it significantly more! She loves aerobics/PE, choir (during monday afternoon playtime) and playtimes and that's about it!

mumblesmum DD was put on the G&T register for literacy because she was so far ahead for writing, reading and comprehension in reception but in truth she really doesn't want to write much at all now. Partly because she struggles to write her ideas fast enough onto the paper for the speed they come out of her brain, while at other times she sits searching for the perfect idea, dismissing perfectly adequate ones along the way and therefore writing little!! I know they need to see more on the paper, I'm simply having trouble finding ways to help her with this!! But she is slow at writing in general, including for numeracy, where she needs much more challenge than in literacy!

What I'm finding most difficult is that her enthusiasm, drive to learn and sparkle in her eye is slowly slipping away as see fails to see the point of learning when the school will only make her cover it again/refuse to offer her anything suitable, where they don't listen to her and where boredom and not challenge is the expected order of the day. She is becoming happy to cruise on her current abilities, surely that is just all wrong. If a bottom achiever started to cruise, it wouldn't be long before they did something drastic like one-to-one, if a top achiever does it then nobody cares or does anything!

That's why we're contemplating home ed for ds1.

The girls (although on paper more 'gifted' - 10 and 20 iq points higher respectively, full scale) are quite happy in school. It does not seem to be the right environment for Ds1. The girls suck up the boring tasks and self - differentiate, for example, dd2 has taken the one story they did in class, and written a series of them. Ds1 is still theoretically gifted, but he doesn't have the personality type that enables him to make the most of it. And so he wallows.

Horses for courses, and all that jazz.

If you are intending to stick with schooling, you might want to read some carol dweck.

My ds2 was a bit like this, kistigger. Ds1 never seemed to object to easy work, but ds2 got quite dispirited in reception and the beginning of year 1. However, they have recently changed the way they are teaching a bit, so that their work now seems to revolve for a reasonable amount of time around a scenario (eg working for a production company producing a film, or working for a tourist board, etc) in which the children are the experts and have to solve various problems that crop up. It seems to have really captured his imagination and, whilst he was doing the bare minimum, he is now doing much more interesting work, particularly in his writing. I think the problem in state schools is that the gifted children are expected to be able to self-differentiate quite a bit, which is all very well if they feel sufficiently inspired to make the effort, but a little bit harder if they find the work dull. Extra groups doing more, frankly still rather dull, but differentiated work is not necessarily the answer. Finding something that sparks your dd's imagination would be more profitable in terms of her enjoyment and the quality of the work she actually produces in school hours, imo, and she would then be able to do that with the rest of the class, rather than wait for a brief session once a week. Maths is harder to deal with, I think, because it is less easy to self-differentiate sufficiently without a bit more teacher input - whilst a literacy task can be as big or as small as you want to make it, maths problems tend to be a bit more limited to what is put in front of you and you do tend to have to prove you can do the boring, easy stuff before the harder work is offered to you, but improving your dd's writing is surely more a question of finding what will inspire her to write. And I don't think a well read child actually needs to be taught what similes or metaphors are, or what nouns or verbs are, or complex sentences, clauses and sub-clauses, before the other children get taught these things, to be able to use them in their writing.

We went to the library yesterday to do a research project, dd was happy as larry reading the adult encyclopedia cos there was nothing on lemurs in the childrens section... she only wrote one sentence and drew a map of Madagascar. I had rather hoped that finding something she is incredibly interested in would be a good opportunity to get some more words on the paper but evidently not! Ds on the other hand wrote quite a bit but it was incomprehensible rubbish (not that I told him so!!) but had to be told that research meant finding out things you didn't know before not racking your brains for information you have learned elsewhere!! But at least both of them learned the library number system and how to look in the book for their subject and then find the correct number on the shelf... so not a wasted afternoon by any means!!!

Yes, rabbitstew maths is harder than literacy for the child to differentiate themselves in class. What puzzles me is how some schools allow children to do maths lessons with higher level classes or are given higher level work yet other schools do nothing.

Interesting that some schools and teachers go out of their way to allow children to achieve their individual potential and other schools assume all children are the same and work at making sure they achieve minimum government standards and nothing more! I am intrigued that the government requires that all 'children of compulsory school age... receive efficient full-time education suitable to his age, ability and aptitude, and to any special educational needs he may have'. Yet dd's only give age appropriate education, not education truly suited to her ability or aptitude. Surely then they are breaking the law, to a degree!!!

Well dd reading the encyclopedia is a slight exaggeration, she was flicking through the pages and reading the descriptions under the pictures, if I had left her for longer with it she may have read significantly more!

On a totally different tack - have you ever found this web-site? it has loads of videos, photos and info on all kinds of lemurs and endangered species. ARKive

Ideas to encourage writing:
birthday prez ideas lists! Can get maths in by adding the costs up, too. Lists of their friends. Lists of anything Letters to favourite authors. Cards to friends & relatives.

I feel a key part of the G-label is that they self-differentiate.

I would be quite concerned that her writing doesn't remotely match her reading & maths skills. And yet you say she was on G+T list in reception, how could that be but she barely writes anything now?

Kistigger..... My DS had the same issue. Reception and first half of Y1, produced reams and reams of writing. One day he showed to his teacher a whole page of self-directed KS2-level work. I was furious watching her totally dismiss him. To this day he has refused to write, saying that there is no point, and each time he gets literacy homework is a battle. Hell do it and has great ideas, but won't put them on paper. I am sure there are arguments on both sides re praise for work, but in Y1 encouragement goes a long way. I'd just heap on the praise every time she DOES produce work, and ignore the rest. It's working for us, gradually.... DS wrote a 400word short story last week.

Kistigger.... Another tactic is to let her use the laptop to 'write', it gives
her another medium and may break the 'cycle'. It worked for us!

ragged she was assessed at the end of reception for G&T stuff this year. Last year she was miles ahead of everyone. It's not uncommon for G&T children to learn unevenly ie that one area is significantly further ahead of behind. If a child is talented at football, you would not also expect them to be talented at ballet, so why should a child that is gifted in maths, reading and comprehension also be gifted at writing? It also hasn't helped that her last teacher used her an example all the time, so sometimes I wonder if she is trying to crawl into the woodwork in order to avoid being made the centre of attention again!

Basically, she has spent the entire of her time at nursery and reception with minimum input (I mean by that, at nursery it was non-existent, and only slightly better in school) from staff on the basis that she had completed all that was expected of her in terms of the foundation curriculum and therefore they had more important things to do like working with those who hadn't. She mostly wants to fit in so she plays dumb, babytalks, pretends she can't do anything, refuses to write because other children at the time were not writing etc. Which I understand is all very important but the point is that as far as I can tell she has learnt nothing academically in the past 2.5 years from her school/nursery environment, what she knows is because we have done it at home. And whilst I agree that interaction with other children, building relationships is vital etc, she should be learning to her level too. I feel like she spends 6.5 hours per day at school learning how to interact, eat and play in the playground and 0 hours learning anything else, surely there should be more balance than that!!

mumblesmum Thanks for the website, only had a quick glance but looks fab, will show her tomorrow!

abeltasman Showing a teacher a piece of work and getting the turned up nose treatment is the pits, don't know if that's happened to DD but I do think it likely, one of her teachers gives me that variety of response every time I approach her. Glad your DS is starting to overcome it! Computer and lots of praise... both sound good, thanks.

ragged It's her Birthday today, so there will be lots of opportunity to write thank you notes/cards. Excellent idea!

Interestingly she was excited top go to school today, perhaps cos she wanted to tell all her friends it is her Birthday... waiting to see the response tomorrow!!

We've had two days of excited to go to school in the last two weeks, one was the Monday mentioned above and the other was yesterday because it was trip day, the rest have been moaning crying type days... I really think school is a waste of time when this is her attitude to it!!

ragged she wrote all her thank you notes last weekend, she didn't write a lot in each but all good practice!

My DS was accelerated a year at aged 6 as he was being taken out into the reading groups in the year above every day and it was disrupting both him and the rest of the class. The only way the school could cope with challenging him was by moving him up a year, and he has always been top of that year group since then ( he is now almost 11).
However, he had a big issue with writing from the start- on two fronts, first the actual motor skills required to write the letters, partly because his mind was working much faster than his hand/brain co-ordination. Secondly, for structured writing tasks such as writing a story- he had brilliant imagination adn could tell you a great story, but organising his thoughts into a written form was very hard and stressful. He actually got to the stage he was getting upset and frustrated, crying even when faced with a writing task and it became a bit of a mental block with him.
The school was brilliant and spent one on one time working with him with our home support on a handwriting technique to tackle the motor skills. Secondly, we worked together with them and him on mind maps to try to put some order to his thoughts and structure them into report writing/ story structure. Over time, he has come to love writing. His handwriting is still untidy but legible and fluent, and he is now able to write stories/ reports/ drama scripts etc without any problem.
Socially, he has struggled a bit but he has loads of extra curricular interests with sport, music and drama, Scouts etc which keeps him socialised and busy.

3nationsfamily will your DS be moving up to secondary a year early? What size school is he in? I think DDs trouble does have something to do with her brain moving too fast for her hand to keep up with. She has the skills to physically write the letters, fortunately. Mind maps sound like an interesting strategy to try working on with her in terms of organisational skills/fluency!

Apparently she enjoyed school yesterday because they did gymnastics (bare feet climbing on the apparatus), she couldn't remember what work they covered though. Just waiting for DH to bring her home to see how good/bad her day was!

excuse me, 3nations - what was the handwriting technique? My DS sounds exactly the same - he's now 6, very advanced reader and knowledge and understanding, and teacher suggests we should find a gifted program for him (we're abroad), but he struggles to complete written work. I will try showing him mind maps, that's a good idea.

Flimflammery- the programme is the Teodorescu Perceptuo Motor programme. We got workbooks through the school but I think you can buy books from Amazon on the plan. It looks really basic joining the dots type exercises but perservere and we found it really worked for him.

Kistigger- we are in Scotland so the timing of moving to High school is different. However, we looked around at the good local state school and also at the many private schools here. We decided to put him forward for 2 top schools- both which are primarily boarding schools that take day pupils, and both operate the English curriculum which also means that the children are a minimum of 6 months older than their Scottish counterparts.

To cut a long story short, he got offered academic scholarships to both schools, and they both were impressed with his sporting interest and music/drama experience too. I think he had an all round appeal to them and therefore they made us generous bursary offers (after means testing). So he is actually going back in with his own agegroup although he will still be one of the youngest as he is a July birthday. However, in a class average size of 15 they can teach him on an individual level where he is particularly advanced, but staying within with his peer group. For sport, languages etc where he will be trying new subjects he will be with the rest of the class. This school offers lots of extra curricular opportunities as he gets older such as maths olympiad, debating competitions, young engineer of the year entries etc which will strech him.