Tips for HLP child starting Reception

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DD is starting reception next week. She is a bright, highly motivated learner who is reading chapter books, is confident with numeracy (inc. multiplication and division) and her times tables and is a confident writer.

What is the best way to approach things with her school to ensure she is catered for and stretched suitably? I don't wish for her to be treated less favourably by raising this, but equally I don't want to wait until after problems have begun and become ingrained (damaging her enjoyment of school).

I realise some of these threads ellicit negative reactions, but hoping you'll all go easy on me as a first time poster.

This is painful to read as we were in a very similar situation to you. I raised it with the school before we started, and was assured that each child is taught at their level.

The truth is, the school don’t care about children who are ahead. They don’t have time or energy to care. We got a month of special sessions and then DD was dumped back in with everyone else learning the alphabet. Three years passed in which she learned nothing at all that she didn’t already know when she started reception. She was so bored and becoming angry.

It won’t be what you want to hear but we redid our finances and moved to private school.

I wish you all the luck in the world and better teachers than we had. To be fair our school was not good.

Thank you for this. I'm really glad to hear things are better for you - your daughter is lucky to have parents who were focussed on finding a solution.

Out of interest what sort of intervention/activities by the teacher would have helped over those three years?

My DD was not as gifted as yours, but she was reading chapter books when she started Reception in our local state primary.

Having had a slightly tricky situation whilst she was in nursery, with her keyworker contacting her primary school to talk to the reception teacher about my 'gifted' daughter and getting short shrift from the school ('It is not uncommon for children to start school already reading - leave it to us') I kept my mouth shut and waited to see what would happen.

Three weeks into term, I was invited to a meeting to discuss how they could best meet my DD's needs.

It was much better for our relationship with the school that the school approached us, rather than the other way round. Therefore, unless you've already said something, I would suggest you just wait a while. The school will notice quite quickly, especially if your DD is also reasonably outgoing.

To be honest, the targeted support for my DD was patchy throughout primary school, but she had a lovely time, and she aced the 11 plus with just a bit of home prep and very little stress, and has just started at her preferred super-selective grammar school.

Unfortunately she’ll be in a class of up to 30 other children of different abilities from those who can’t hold a pencil to those who can already read. There may be a TA for the class. The teacher will have limited time to provide more stretching work.

Honestly depends on the school. How is her social and emotional development? Is she gelling well with her peers?

I would say reception is a gift for a highly able child as there is lots of creative, physical open ended activity. My similar child loved reception, built things, made things, explored ideas and read books to her class mates. Year 1 and 2 are much trickier as more desk based and focused activities that are harder to stretch and change for highly able dc.

I agree with pp - wait for them to notice - they will review all children in the first few weeks with some simple tests etc and will see her abilities and likely call you in. Good luck.

sideways stretch, creativity - model making, poetry, acting, and social skills - team working, forrest school etc have also been important for my dc through primary. Like pp my dc now very happy as preferred ss grammar.

It's also possible she isn't identified. If the class is learning their letters and each student is tested on their letters, when your daughter gets all 26, a teacher might think "Great, she's learning her letters just fine", especially if they have to be concerned with students who haven't learned all their letters and thus need extra support.

This description amuses me, as my daughter started school reading fluently but unable to hold a pencil!