What to expect from school

[PinotAndPlaydough]

My daughter is 5 and in year 1, she’s bright but I don’t think she’s gifted in a certain area and doesn’t have any talents that I know of! Just a good all rounder.
After speaking to her teacher I know the following-

1. She’s working at greater depth in every area.
2. She should be a free reader (currently on purple band) but apparently she has to move through the levels at an appropriate pace.
3. She does spellings that year 3 are doing.
4. She occasionally goes into year two for literacy.

She likes school and seems happy but complains it’s easy and boring (she has been told she isn’t allowed to tell the teacher the work is easy because it’ll upset other children). At a recent parents evening they said that once she finishes her work she starts to pester the teacher with silly things like “my earlobe aches” or “my eyebrow is sore“. I’m a bit worried that this silliness will escalate into genuine bad behaviour. The teacher asked me to speak to her about it which I have. She says the same old thing, the works easy and boring and there’s nothing to do when she’s finished (this includes the challenges that are set for the whole class to do if they finish early). What should I reasonably expect them to do? Offer her a work sheet or a cross word or something? It sounds like she’s just sitting waiting for everyone to finish.

I know she’s only 1 child out of 30 and probably pretty low down on the teachers list of worries, I’m just not sure what’s reasonable and what’s not?

does she have a reading book in her tray? could you ask the teacher if she could be allowed to read that when she is finished. That way, the teacher won't have any 'extra work' and she won't be calling out silly things

They ought to be able to differentiate for children who are finishing work faster or are able to be stretched with more complex work.

We had similar with DS1 at his first school where he was bored senseless. We moved him at the end of Reception and at his new school they were much better at giving appropriate work whilst keeping children within the same class, either giving additional tasks or deepening the complexity of the problem that needed solving.

He did go up to higher classes for some groups, you could ask if this is an option, but I think it’s best to stay in the same class as peers if possible.

I would want to check if she's completing tasks to the best of her ability or rushing through and completing them but not to a high standard.
I say this as some children end up unintentionally learning that being smart means being done first and it can be a really tough thing to unteach when they get older (for example in y7-9 English the most able students I've worked with would still be writing at the end of the time, crafting their work, might start 5 mins after everyone else because they're thinking about difficult ideas etc but some bright but upper middle students may dive straight in and be done with 20 mins spare).
I know of friends in primary and secondary maths who'll complain that they have bright students, but parents insist they're in the wrong class and it turns out their child loses marks left, right and centre due to not showing their working, not labelling graphs, forgetting to put units on etc so.

That's probably best established by a chat with the teacher about how she's getting on. Ask about her strengths and weaknesses and then take it from there in terms of stretch and challenge.

Teachers should be differentiating and giving her extension work. It's unrealistic to expect a 5 year old to just sit there quietly whilst everyone else is working and she has nothing to do. At the very least they should have agreed things she can do independently- read a book, do a word search, write, draw etc.

Every school will do it differently but with DS1
They put him in groups with children from older years for learning time (they mixed all years R, 1 and 2 for maths and literacy according to ability) he should have been in an even higher group but socially it wasn’t a good idea to be with even older children

In year 1 his teacher made up a special spelling challenge game that she did with him while the other children were doing the normal spellings

Let him choose any book he wanted from the school library rather than the banded books (he did have to move through the bands at first to ensure that he had covered and understood all the technical aspects of reading)

Reading is a good one, she would be very happy with a book. I’ll speak to the teachers about the quality of her work too. We get their books home each term and I haven’t noticed a lack of attention to detail but she still could be rushing.