Should I be worried?

[simoncowellsdog]

Just had DD's first high school parents evening. (Year 7)
General consensus was that she's very hard working, hitting 'secure' in all subjects apart from in Maths and Geography where she's at 'mastery' level so no concerns with her academically. In fact all the teachers said was that she's not very confident and therefore a bit too quiet in class discussions.
All the above was to be expected, she's always loved school and done well in most areas.
The one bit I don't know if I should be worried about or not was her English teachers comments. She said she'd come into the school with one of the lowest reading ages... this came as a bit of a shock as in Primary school she always scored the highest in any reading scores. She loves books, reads daily both to herself and to us at home. Her teacher said she's been taken out of lessons for one to one help with a SENCO teacher which I knew nothing about. Is this cause for concern?
It was a timed 5 minute video call so there wasn't a great deal of opportunity to ask too many questions, all I could gather was that it was to do with her comprehension rather than her ability to read the text.

Comprehension is very hard for many children, especially when it comes to inference etc. What did the school propose as next steps? Could you read with her at home also - ask her questions as she goes about what is happening in the plot, how characters are feeling and how she knows etc.

Twinkl do a good roundup of question types and how to word them - might be helpful if you decide to take this route.

Best of luck to your daughter - Y7 is a tricky transition and it sounds like she is doing really well.

I’d be annoyed if my child had needed SENCO input more than once and I hadn’t been informed. You need another chat with that teacher.

Her teacher said she's been taken out of lessons for one to one help with a SENCO teacher which I knew nothing about. Is this cause for concern?

As a teacher I'm really surprised it wasn't mentioned at all during the year that she had been having such targeted support. An email or phone call to discuss their concerns with you would have been the bare minimum in my opinion. Leaving it until this late in the year and only informing you during parents evening is pretty poor.

Do you think she was talking about the right girl?

Hi, thanks for the replies.
Yes I was a little confused as to why it hadn't been brought our attention sooner.

We do read together regularly, her reading is fluent and expressive and she never struggles with more complex words but I know that's not the area of concern. We chat about the plot but I suppose I maybe don't know what questions to ask so I'll have a look at Twinkle for some guidance thank you.

I understand to an extent what they mean about her not always 'getting' stuff. She very rarely gets jokes, needs them explaining to her and then her usual reply is that she doesn't understand why it's funny. With books/ films she seems to grasp overall plot lines but often misses any sub plots or underlying messages etc. When you try and explain things to her, her response is usually something along the lines of 'oh weird, anyway...'
That's not to say she doesn't find stuff funny, she seems to understand sarcasm and has what I can only describe as quite a dry sense of humour??
I'm not overly concerned, she's happy and thriving. Got a much bigger group of friends than she did at primary and all teachers agreed she's 'in' with a good group of students. It was just more the shock of hearing that SENCO was involved although admittedly I'm possibly ignorant to what that actually means.
I think I'll contact the school and ask to speak with her English teacher in more depth, the appointment was a 5 min video call which cut off after 5 mins so it was really quite rushed

This would be my question too. It seems so completely out of sync with everything else - you really wouldn't expect a child needing SENCO input for comprehension to be achieving at a Mastery level in subjects like Geography.

It sounds like they might have mixed up two students. It happens. My mum once got a glowing report on my sporting prowess in PE when I'd had a broken arm and been sitting on a bench watching for the whole term.

Crossposted, ignore me!