Yr. 1 child bored and reluctant to go to school

[Gorran]

Child is in top group and very bright - reception teacher was fantastic, did lots of extension work with this group, really good at bringing them on and inspiring them - child very much enjoyed school.

Yr.1 teacher is 'tired', older lady nearing retirement who, at a guess, is just seeing out at her time - not inspiring at all, very unenthusiastic at parents evenings etc.

Clearly my DD is not being extended and says her group are mostly doing the same work as the rest of the class - whereas before in reception they were being given yr.1/yr.2 work (which obviously she is now re-doing - total waste of time). Anyway, she is now saying she is bored, reluctant to go to school, says the work is too easy.

I'm going to ask teacher tomorrow for a meeting to discuss these issues - but tell me honestly, in a state school, how likely is it that anything effective will be done? Is it true that very bright pupils always suffer in large state school classes? This is our first child to put through school so obviously this is all new to us and we're very concerned that if she's bored at the age of 5 then what happens next?...

Thank you for any advice you can offer.

I actually really like her teacher as a person, as do the children, so no, she doesn't know that I find her uninspiring and tired. I'm sure she picks up on that herself, seeing as she's said before how different Mrs A is to Mrs B (previous teacher who was very dynamic and enthusiastic), but of course all teachers teach differently. And I would never let my DD think she could play school off against her parents/vice versa - we are very supportive of the school and I'm a parent governor so I'm quite careful of my stance anyway.

No, the work is definitely easy - her homework is indicative of this - two sheets this weekend and the whole class were given the same, simple adding which DD was capable of in reception, and had been moved on past this in reception - so this really is rework and from DD's POV, totally boring. She's such a keen little girl, loves learning, enjoys being challenged and I'm just very concerned that her zest for education is going to be marred by the boredom she's experiencing at the moment..

Thank god I'm not the only one. My 5 year old boy has always been bright. It has been a joy to watch his curious mind soak up all the knowledge he can get his hands on. He has always loved his state school at nursery class and reception. Now he is in year one. The teacher has moved from reception this year. i thought that would be great as she would still be a bit touchy feely with the kids.
My previously beautifully behaved (albeit lively and cheeky) boy who loved life and school has changed and I have a crisis on my hands. he hates going to school now. He says he is bored so much he wants leave or cry. He sits down all day waiting for the others to catch up. he has started wetting the bed every few nights. His behaviour has become terrible. He asks to read the books at school upside down to make it a bit more interesting.
I brought this to the teachers attention 10 days into term to avoid this crisis. She did nothing because she has to concentrate on the less able kids. She has refused help from class mums to read with the less able kids.
My beautiful happy child is about to be ruined by school and I'm so sad. Why oh why cant he be given an exercise and then allowed to go read a book when he's finished it, or go outside in the playground? or be given a challenging exercise?

I don't think homework is any guide to what is happening in class so I wouldn't base your opinion on that. I also doubt that your DD is an expert on what is happening on other tables. Before making any assumptions, I'd suggest talking to the teacher about how DD is being extended. It might be that she is "bored" because she's not liking the change from YR to Y1 (my DS was like this) rather than not being challenged.

My DD is in Y1 at a state school. She's also one of the more able children . However, the work is divided to be appropriate to the level of each child. In DD's class for example, all the children might be working on addition, but the lower table might be finding 1 more than a number whereas the top table are adding 2 digit numbers. This week the children did some work on a fairy tale- some children had to write down some words linked to the story, some wrote a few simple questions and the most able were writing over a page of "proper" story with capital letters, full stops, varied language etc (the work is on the wall, which is how I know ...).

This is exactly what happened to my DD I'm afraid. In her case we seemed to have alternate years where one teacher would stretch her and give her work appropriate to her abilities, then the following year she'd end up repeating stuff she'd done a year or even two before. The worst example was when she went into Y3 and was given Y3 comprehensions having spent Y2 doing the comprehensions that Y5 were doing.

I have no doubt that some teachers are great at differentiation, unfortunately some aren't. All you can do is raise it with the teacher and don't give up. Sometimes it can take a while to get anything done about it, sometimes it never gets rectified.

Fwiw DD is now in Y9 at a very academic school where she is happy and doing very well. I just think it's a shame for her that she had to spend so many of her primary school years bored and disengaged.

Sorry not to be more positive but these sort of threads often attract replies along the lines of what redskyatnight said. It's great that her experience is good but it's really not always the case.

I would go and have a chat with the teacher. I have experienced similar to both redsky and jordan in the same class with same teacher, but different subjects. Whilst it turned out DD's maths was being extended really well, it seems that for what ever reason her literacy was virtually ignored.

Homework is not always a good indicator and DD in year 3 is a good example of this as she gets home lots of 10 more\ 10 less type worksheets whereas in class she is doing year 5\6 work. The aim of the homework is to make her mental maths really fast so she instinctively knows whether answers are right or wrong.