Weird school report?

[sambaba]

DD, just turned 5, has been able to read since 2. She can now read for example Harry Potter. She will ask about and respond to punctuation in text. Comprehension is amazing.
She started school this Sep and her first school report says underachieving for language and communication.
Both her nurseries identified her language was very advanced.
For context DH and I are both teachers and were also both GAT at literacy.
Is this a bit odd? I don't really plan on saying anything but I'm just a bit baffled.
It's two form entry and there are a lot of challenging kids I think including one whose been a bit violent at time, I suspect she's a gentle soul and doesn't say much.

I agree with PP that have pointed out that could be an error.

Like you, I was a teacher and my daughter, I was told, had the most advanced language the reception teacher had come across. But her very inexperienced young teacher after reception year told me she was the slowest child in the class. My little girl was being badly bullied and the teacher didn’t see it or know how to deal with it when I drew her attention to it. She was , at six years old, hiding what she could do to lessen the bullying. It was a dreadful experience and I had to move her to another school where the teacher called me over in the playground to tell me my daughter had scored the top score in the reading test. Not because my child was a genius but she was bright and I was a teacher,

Once has a parent teacher meeting at older age and asked about report saying DD1 could do I think it was up to 6 times table - we thought she could do more so queried it - got told Dd1 needed instant recall.

So teacher to prove her point threw times tables at her DD1 replied instantly back with right answer - teacher kept on got up to 12 time table - DD1 clearly knew them all with instant recall. Teacher shrugged said they were not correcting report or moving her up groups - she was near bottom - we hadn't asked for either.

It did tell us though that the school couldn't be relied on for maths teaching - so kept up with extra maths we were paying for outside school.

So always ask - sometimes the answers are very illuminating.

I'm not sure what you were hoping for OP. Loads of posts telling you that the teacher is clearly wrong or made a mistake as you know best?

Just talk to the teacher with a tad more respect and listening skills than you've shown on this thread.

Op my dh works and has taught computer science for years. Whenever issues come up in cs at the school pt meetings (when I go) he lists off what they’ve done, what they can do etc and skirts any direction they offer to give his own advice and off he goes with his methods. I once told a teacher dh taught in it and she rolled her eyes and said yes (ds) has told me. 😅

Working in the field of something your children can lead you to be blind to how they approach things, their issues, or their likes/ dislikes in relation to the topic. She’s five and you’ve not seen how she interacts in class, maybe she gets nervous or maybe she’s quiet, maybe she doesn’t like the teacher or doesn’t like the reading material. You and your dh need to take a bit of a step back in how you’re studying the school response and just talk to them.

Um...she's just said her husband is a SENCo!

Therefore...

I would simply ask what the actually mean by that, to have an idea.

Not the point of this thread but I am struggling to read zjoump.

Kindly, you seem very annoyed at this and I think it's coming across in your replies as very defensive to anyone suggesting reasons why the teachers may have spotted concerns that you and your DH have missed. Not judging - I'd likely be annoyed too!

You clearly think you have a better idea about this than the teacher. And maybe you genuinely do! I'm not arguing about that.

But I'm not sure what you're looking for from the replies here? Do you just want everyone to agree with you unanimously that its odd rather than offer explanations or advice?

Your only option to get to the bottom of it is to speak to the teacher so if you don't want to do that I'm not sure what more anyone can say? Just try to forget about it and ignore it, especially as you don't believe there is any issue.

My DH works in the field of one of my DC subjects. He now avoids helping DC with their homework as he says the curriculum (not just the teacher) has various things wrong but DC has to learn those wrong things to pass the exam so he had better listen to the teacher instead.

I’m not sure what you are looking to get out of this OP.

My kids are older and I’ve had lots of weird reports. Working towards in year 7 English with dd1 was one of my favourites. She then went to above and was ever since. I’m genuinely not sure what that teacher was expecting!

I also remember them being marked lower against EYFS at the start of reception than in nursery.

I think schools very often structure reports to make it look like they’ve made progress at least in my experience. You’ll find she gets marked higher later in the year. I reckon meh, she’s just in reception.

In a nonsense / alien word task it would usually be spelled 'zhoump' to test the child's knowledge of the /zh/ or ʒ sound, like the s in 'treasure' and 'vision'.

Is she bored at school and not doing her work. My parents taught me to read vefore school and I was a very high level reader and high level maths. I then basically did no work when I got there, I got into trouble, scribbled all over everything, refused to work as it was boring and easy. Potentially this could be something to look into.

How did she do in the reception baseline assessment? This should have flagged any issues within the first six weeks.

Op I was like your daughter. I was reading books of that level by 5 - I have quite severe ADHD and was behind in a lot of other subjects - but always very advanced at reading - and yes fully understood what I was reading.

Children can have a mix/ spiky profile of abilities.

I wonder if she is struggling with social communication? My daughter is autistic and also a mix of academically capable and totally struggles socially

What surprises me, is that you haven’t contacted school before and been in to discuss her.

A child reading at 2 is unusual. A child reading Harry Potter at 5 is unusual. You are teachers and know it’s unusual and know communication between school and parents is vitally important. So why haven’t you raised these unusual thu gs and how school can work with her appropriately …why are you on MN asking and being defensive?

Teachers know they need to work with school. They know mis-communications or misunderstandings can happen and teachers are v bust and schools sometimes gave odd ways of doing things or narrowly constrained assssmment frameworks. They know that speaking g to clarify and get stuff in place early is vital. It’s now Christmas. Just seems odd really.

Personally, I would have a nice friendly chat with the teacher to ask her what she means. It maybe a mistake, or it maybe that your daughters personality does not have a chance to shine if there are other children who monopolise attention for whatever reason. Your daughter may feel overpowered by dominant personalities in the room and if so, you need to know this.

Its not unreasonable to want to clarify what the issues is so you can help address it.

Yes, this is possible

It was actually that we were assumed to be Baptists!
I don't know what one is really, we don't follow a religion at all. I suppose she just saw white MC people and assumed we couldn't possible know anyone who wasn't the same
I asked the Teacher what else she thought we should be doing to remedy the situation given the circumstances I mentioned in my post and she couldn't answer. She did say that she was trying to offer a suggestion on how to improve as she didn't want the report to be "completely positive"
It was a long time ago (DD is 19 now) but all we could do was laugh

Why wouldn't you raise it with the teacher? Of course you should. If she is being extremely quiet in school well then of course you should see is there a problem, find out what it is and work to help her feel more comfortable at school

She’s probably just quiet in class OP, I wouldn’t worry about it.

@Hoppinggreen She did say that she was trying to offer a suggestion on how to improve as she didn't want the report to be "completely positive".

I get that. As a preschool teacher, I always look at where there is a weakness which we can work together to improve, be that confidence in speaking in front of others, solving issues with friends, or simply fine motor muscle strength. DDs teacher in Y2 said to me at parent's evening, "She's perfect." I was a little taken aback. Where do you go from there? Then I said, "Well, I think her spelling could do with some improvement." So we got onto that then I asked more questions about different areas I thought of. There were lots of areas for improvement but if I hadn't asked, I may not have got.

Yes, speak to the teacher. Could be that she is very quiet at school, or it could be that they have the wrong child.

I once had a lovely email from a teacher about how well Bethany was doing, coming out of her shell and that she had done an amazing project. I'm sure Bethany's mum was delighted when I sent it on to her. Was none the wiser as to how my child was doing though!!

Perhaps you should have suggested term time trips to investigate the culture of various countries….

NB I doubt Harry Potter is appropriate for a 5-year-old - I don't think the child's knowledge base will allow comprehension.
This (from Grammarnut above) is what I was trying to say, but less articulately. i also agree entirely with CurlewKate about the disadvantages of rushing them. At that age I was reading my dd (not a precocious reader, and not in the UK) Milly-Molly-Mandy, Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf, Mrs Pepperpot and the like. Simple plots and short story format but a great deal in there for her to discover, in terms of themes, characters and just very good simple writing. If she'd been interested I'd have done HP with her in the last year or so (she's 9 now). We've done stuff like the Swallows and Amazons series and Noel Streatfeild instead.