DS (just 7) in tears tonight. Behaviour over half term was fairly bad, assumed he was tired, but now think he's unhappy at school.
Some background: His school have had an oversubscription issue which resulted in an entire school restructure starting this term. Every class from Y1 has been streamed according to overall ability and social and emotional development. The school has always had a split year system with a 45 intake, so its the norm for a shift around of classmates each year, but as this has always been done on age and DS's birthday is very close to his group of friends', we assumed they would always be together. In the restructure, a new Y2/3 class has been created, with 8 Y2 children and 22 Y3. DS, as one of the only two Y2 boys, has been split up from all his friends. He has seemingly coped very well with this, rejoining them in the playground at lunchtime, and integrating well with his classmates in the classroom. The work is much more well suited to him and he is enjoying this side of things.
He is following the Y3's in terms of the lessons he's attending. They go to a different classroom for science with a specialist teacher, and a different one for geography/PSHE with another teacher. His class teacher teaches everything else in his classroom except art and PE.
Twice a week, the Y2 children in DS's class are asked to go in for free play with a straight Y2 class, which contains all his friends. It is this that is making him unhappy. Its hard to get to the root of it, but I gather its bound up in a feeling of missing out on what his Y2/3 classmates are doing ( "I don't want to do free play, its rubbish, I want to do what they are doing" ), combined with feelings of confusion and lack of knowledge of the straight Y2 teacher and her classroom and the things in it, especially compared to his friends ( " They all play with something rubbish that I don't like, so I end up playing with the girls, it makes me sad.")
His unhappiness is transferring to the playground now. The last few days, he's been playing with some girls in his class at lunchtime instead of playing football with his friends. This is very, very unusual for him. He has a tendency to play with girls when he is feeling insecure. NB I love him playing with girls AND boys - this isn'' the issue. The issue is I recognise it as a marker of unhappiness and lack of confidence in him.
I want to speak to his teacher or the Head about it and am unsure about how to pitch it. The 8 children in his class are guinea pigs, there's a real lets try this and see what happens approach, so I think if I can go to them with some solutions rather than just the issues it would be more effective. Any ideas appreciated.