Starting school - advice please

[MyAngels]

Hi
DS is 4.5 and starts school in September. I appreciate he hasn't been officially titled G&T, but I know that he must have "high learning potential" (is that the better phrase?) and I thought posting here would put me in less danger of "bragging", than posting elsewhere..

If you had a gifted child (and you suspected they were, when going into Reception), how did you manage that with the teachers? Did you tell them your suspicions, and risk getting the "I'm a professional, its my job to educate/socialise him, I'll take it from here, thank you.." response (we got this from his preschool teacher), or keep quiet, wait till they notice and come to you?

My DS's abilities seem to have gone ballistic in the last few months, starting to read (on his own), adding up (begs me to do adding with him - can now do number bonds to 10 easily, to 20 with a bit more effort), learnt to tell the time this week - yesterday I found him searching on iplayer for his beloved Dolly Parton (we went to Glastonbury!) by typing "dolie" in the search line with no help from me....

I'm trying not to do too much with him for fear of looking like a pushy parent, but will, of course, answer him and show him if he asks me something.

We have had trouble at preschool with him - not doing as told, defying teacher, not sitting on carpet etc. His new reception teachers (job share) are aware of these aspects (which of course need attention), but I'm just not sure how best to approach them about his more intellectual abilities. We have a 30 minute meeting with the teachers arranged for the Friday before he starts in September, by the way.

Any advice very welcome, thanks.

Goldmandra said "My DD couldn't access that curriculum because she didn't see the point in pretending to be on an aeroplane in the first place and she didn't want to interact with the other children. That was due to her having AS. I hope that's not what you mean by weird."

I used 'weird' in a sarcastic way because I was annoyed by people implying that their experiences meant my experiences were somehow invalid.

For a while we (and the school) thought she might be AS, but since she's had the opportunity to spend time with older children we're no longer so sure: what presented as AS might well have been that she just didn't see the point in socialising with her age peers. Now we're near the end of reception she is better with her age peers because obviously they are now older and more mature.

Thanks for you comments coppertop - it sounds like our children have/had the same issues.

My friends dd is G+T - lovely girl

She was speaking and writing in 3 languages when she started reception.

So your child has nothing to learn from Handa's Surprise because she is capable of reading Harry Potter and that she has outgrown learning through play.

OK.

I'm glad you have moved your child to a school that makes you feel happier and I hope she continues to thrive

Clearly we can see here that there are exceptions - and the child's attitude and personality will also affect how they integrate and play in Reception. However, this is the curriculum now, and rightly so. Many parents/experts believe that children in his country start school too early. But there will be some children who will not adapt easily to what school has to offer, and a good school should be able to provide a good education to children of all abilities. We all know that some schools are better than others. I think that many schools will have one or two children starting Reception every year who can read, and who have a more advanced understanding of maths concepts, it's not unusual. It's not unheard of.

It didn't occur to us to speak to DS's teacher before he started Nursery, probably because we didn't know the extent of his talent - and also because (as others mentioned here) he has special educational needs - with a severe speech disorder. We focused a lot more on him making friends, socialising, learning to communicate with other children rather than focusing on his talent, which was identified early but only in Y2 was stretched with significantly more advanced work in class and homework. If it's a true talent, it should be stalled by a play-based environment. There are exceptions of course. I never ever thought that he was wasting his time by learning to socialise better, learning the 'rules' of being at school, and not sitting down learning in a formal manner.

To turn that on its head, do you think it is educationally appropriate for that to be the only work on the book given to a child who, the year before, was writing one page book reports on books she had chosen?

And I did not say that she had outgrown learning through play, nowhere in my posts. What I did say - and this is the same as what some other posters have been saying - is that she was playing in a different way to the children in her class which made the learning rather less straightforward.

She had lots of friends, she learned to sit on the carpet. All good. But she made very little academic progress in the entire year of reception. Other children made loads - why is this OK?

I'm sure you're completely right about everything tender

All I am saying is that I know what happened to my child and, unfortunately, it shows that the real world doesn't quite fit your theories.

And at least I don't have to rewrite other people's posts to make my point.

Would be nice if you answered the last question though.

There's no point in discussing this any further. You will be right

Children tend to make progress in more areas than just literacy and maths.

However, I agree with other posters.

You are right.

When my DCs studied Handa's Surprise in Y1, it was the basis for a whole range of activities. They talked about other countries, healthy eating (incl. making and eating fruit salads, writing and illustrating recipes and linking to their My Body topic), the story-boarding encouraged them to draw illustrations and to understand what makes a story, they came up with alternative versions of the story, they also did some design work with colours and patterns. The reading was only a tiny part what they were doing.
And I'm not convinced that Harry Potter would have been a better basis for any of this work.

tenderbuttons is correct - there is no need for other posters to try and undermine his/her experience (which is similar to my own)

tenderbuttons is describing their experience. That means it might be different from your own. That doesn't mean it's incorrect.

If one sent one's child to an athletics club and they were the fastest runner, does anyone think the club would say 'run slower and make lots of friends'

I don't see why so many people think that making no academic progress is fine as long as the children do as they are told and make friends.

But that will probably be twisted to make out like I'm being unreasonable or a liar.

If one sent one's child to an athletics club and they were the fastest runner, does anyone think the club would say 'run slower and make lots of friends'

No but they might say stop running for a bit and try some of these exercises because the skills and strengths they will give you will help you to run faster later on.

They would also say that working as part of a team is an important skill for an athlete too.

Haven't read whole thread but my dd1 could do all these things pre-reception and she is very able but not gifted. She loves school and always has done.

I'm a secondary teacher of 5 years in a high achieving comprehensive. Am yet to meet a gifted child, though I have met a large number of extremely able and ambitious children and a large number of parents who think their child is gifted.

I'm sure a gifted child would stand out. There was a boy in ds's primary school who was on the as spectrum but incredibly talented at maths. He was probable genuinely gifted in that area but he was barely literate

Let your child enjoy school, keep talking to their teachers and enriching their learning at home and I'm sure ds will do really well at school.

she is very able but not gifted

This is where the gifted and talented register causes terrible misunderstandings. Very few children on it are gifted in the more usual sense of the word.

Goldmandra "They would also say that working as part of a team is an important skill for an athlete too."

To which, presumably, you'd reply that apart from relay events athletics is not a team sport?

Your analogy "they might say stop running for a bit and try some of these exercises because the skills and strengths they will give you will help you to run faster later on" is somewhat flawed. The equivalent for how some gifted children feel in reception would be "stop running for a bit even though you're good at it and are keen to do more, and do something that's a bit like running and that you've already mastered - like walking. And do that every training session, every day, for a year. This will make you a faster runner"

I'm sure a gifted child would stand out.

Have you read all the research that says that many gifted children - girls in particular - do everything they can to not stand out, and to hide their giftedness in order to 'fit in' with a culture that - as demonstrated in this thread - can be rather harsh towards them?

Children want to fit in. Being gifted means you don't - hiding it is very common - they don't always stand out.

Thanks cheebame. I've not said that anyone else's experiences are wrong, just that ours don't fit the pattern that other people are insisting is universal.

I think Goldmandra is giving us a good demonstration of why so many schools fail gifted children. There is a theory of education which has to be defended at all costs, no actual answering of questions and a refusal to take on board research that has been done. Oh, and no importance attached to what parents say about their child.

For what its worth, incidentally, we had two full apologies from the old school for failing DD. The first time they tried to put it right but it only listed for a bit, the second time we gave up.

To which, presumably, you'd reply that apart from relay events athletics is not a team sport?

Err, no. It doesn't have to be a team sport for you to benefit from working as a team to train and improve.

But, hey, I'm sure you've studied how children learn through play and peer interaction in great detail at university too and know exactly what you're talking about

Equally, though, the best runners need to train with people at their level, and compete against them in order to improve.

There's a girl in DD's school who will try out for the Junior UK swimming team next year. No one pretends that school swimming lessons are any use to her at all, instead she goes club training with her peers three times a week. Why should the expectation be any different for academic subjects.

Schools tend not to cater well at either end of the spectrum. This is the way of education systems all over, I believe, as certain subjects are rated more highly than others (oddly enough, subjects which are rarely used 'real life'. Who needs A level maths to run a business?). There may be 'help' for kids at the bottom end but this misses the point. Perhaps their 'gifted and talented' area is dancing, but this needs to be done out of school and will get little recognition within the education environment. Personally I feel it's all far too limiting and becoming more so under Gove.

No one pretends that school swimming lessons are any use to her at all

Children learn holistically. She could be learning all sorts of skills in those school swimming lessons that are absolutely nothing to do with her swimming prowess.

To go back to the original question, my advice would be to say nothing about his abilities for as long as you can.

Teachers tend to adopt the attitude that you've already experienced in pre-school when a parent tells them that their child is gifted, so keep them on side as long as you can and enjoy it.

If he is gifted, but the school is not exceptional, then you will probably eventually find yourself asking for more challenging work for him. From then on, it will be an uphill struggle as you get rebuffed and ignored over and over for years to come.

BTW "Pushy parent" is the central piece of the armoury in parent-teacher meetings and "you are deluded" and "you are depriving your child of his childhood" are the two main offensive remarks you will encounter here on the G&T board.

My advice would be

1. to keep your expectations low of how well school will cater for your child's educational needs
2. do what you feel is right with regarding to helping him develop his interests
3. Only praise effort, never intelligence (this has been one of my mistakes) and
4. Encourage him to conform behaviour-wise

Great tip on number 3 and 4!

I'm a teacher and absolutely agree with dalziel's points.

Conformity and non conformity are both essential life skills :)