Extending maths - which class?

[CanAnyMother]

My DS (autumn born 5 year old) is good with numbers - not sure G&T but comfortable with most Year 2 maths and will have a stab at some Year 3 type questions.

He is coming to the end of reception, where his lovely teacher does maths one-on-one with him a couple of times a week (which they manage because there are two TAs, class of 26 and everything is free flow/learn through play so easy to pull him aside).

Next year the school are debating whether to keep him with his Year 1 class and try to extend, or send him up to Year 2 for the maths lessons and extend there. They asked if we had an opinion. I don’t! Any suggestions?

He gets anxious in new places (ie hates drop off classes and finds play dates in unfamiliar homes very tricky) but it is a small school and he has two good friends in the year above.

We aren’t doing much at home - just letting him do Maths Apps whenever he wants and setting the odd challenge when he is in the mood.

Would welcome any advice.

Thank you!

Take the option of going to yr2 if he is up for it, with a option of coming back if he doesn't like it?
I think going into year above is not that effective anyway, if he is already comfortable in doing work from 2/3 years above.
What they can offer as a challenge/extension matters more, I think.

Only my experience but a friend of DC, let's call him Trevor, went to a different class and did Y1 maths whilst in YR. He was clearly way ahead of the others in his class at the time and there was no debate that he was extremely bright.

Fast-forward two years and there are a number of children all at the same level. Trevor isn't always top of the group and all of these 'top' children in the class are doing extended work in maths.

However Trevor's parents are not at all happy and liked it much better when Trevor was on his own doing maths with the year above.

Based on that, if your DC has teachers that are able to challenge him in his current class and provide extension work I would keep him with his peers. There is so much change at that age and it's harder to be 'dropped back' in a year's time.

Will doing maths with Y2 be enough to 'extend' him? Or does the school think they are fulfilling their 'extension' requirement, when in actual fact it will be more easy stuff in a different age group?

Sometimes remaining in your year group will make it more obvious that just doing 'top table' stuff is not enough.

I would choose targeted extension work within his year group, over the school ticking their boxes by letting him do maths in the year above.

Only if there happens to be a very able child or two in Y2 who are getting their own extension work, then it could be a good idea of your child could join this 'extension' group. But not just to join regular Y2 maths.

I would say differentiate in the same class, if the child is able, they would still need differentiating in the year 2 class, the maths is no harder in year 2 than year 1, the kids have just had more practice.

There are few new concepts that a very able mathematician can't grasp in primary maths quickly, it's mostly (rightly) lots of repetition to make the understanding and the answering automatic. Year 2 maths classes would just be more repetition of things he's grasped easily just like now.

Summer born DD had no problem with the KS1 maths SATs at this point in reception, but the school was able to differentiate in class.

Thank you all - really helpful perspectives. Sounds like the consensus is to extend within his class.

I think I agree - the Yr 2 stuff would be too easy and I am a bit worried being “special” at maths might start to become important to his identity. He is already competitive and on reflection if he ends up “dropping back” like Trevor that might be really hard on him.

I am having a chat with the teacher and SEN coordinator next week so I will update you!

I'd expect the school to be doing a mastery based approach that kept him with his year group. An advantage of that approach is that it deals with the problems of:

• what will the most able will do in year 6 when they have covered everything and are stuck back in with their own year group?
• what will they do when they actually need to skip up two year groups for maths?

I'm not entirely sold on mastery for G&T children in maths, though that is probably how it is applied in my DD's school rather than mastery over all.

The idea seems to be not to go onto the next year's curriculum but to do more reasoning based work. So, for example, about a term into year one, my DD mentioned to her teacher that she understood how negative numbers worked as was told "that's nice, you'll do that in year 4". My DD was left a bit deflated by that as I think she knew that she could go beyond the curriculum but was being held back (in school). Sometimes the work that appears to be more challenging just seems to have more reading in the questions.

On the plus side, there are some really interesting activities that can be used to genuinely do reasoning - for example nrich.maths.org has lots.

On balance, I think I'd prefer to have my child kept with their year group and be provided with appropriately differentiated work, but that must be a challenge for the teacher as they do potentially have to plan quite different work for a single child.

My DS is G&T in maths. He is currently in y4 doing the y5/6 level of what the rest of the class is doing. I have asked school to therefore prioritise his weaknesses eg writing, comprehension, explaining his answers etc after he has completed his maths. I don't want his English to be too far behind his maths otherwise he will get to the point where he can't understand the complex problem solving questions, as his reading skills won't be as developed, or that he won't be able to explain his complex workings as he doesn't have the relevant verbal reasoning skills.

Therefore I'd say keep him with his class with extended maths, and concentrate on helping him build other important skills.