Teachers - what would you have done

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Hi I have a 8 y.o. dd who is currently year 3.

Dd entered Yr3 with level 3c in her SATs for all her English and Maths. She also has a big problem with being easily distracted and lack of focus.

These problems were ones we pointed out to her yr3 teacher at the beginning of the year and said that if dd wasn't doing enough work that the teacher shouldn't be worried if she needed to keep dd in at break until she finished or send her home with work to complete as we would support this.

Having received dds end of year report it states that dd although capable has not progressed much this year as she has done very little written work in class to show what she can do.

At no time has dd been kept in during break or work sent home through out the year and we haven't been called in to discuss any problems.

Effectively, dd has had a holiday all year and know dh and I feel that we have to teach dd during the holidays in order that she can be doing the best that she is actually capable of rather than what the teachers have let her get away with.

If you had a bright but under achieving child in your class what would you have done?

I wouldn't have waited for a whole year before contacting the parents, that's for sure.
Keeping them in at break would not have been my preferred method (I need a break too!), but even if I had forgotten what you had said at the start of the year, I would have contacted the parents.

The teacher should have kept in better contact with you throughout the year, to let you know that she wasn't doing as well as she could have been.
Sending work home can be tricky if it relied on the input in class, different if it was something you could support her with and understand what she was expected to do. Is it writing she struggles with, and is that cross-curricular or just in literacy? What about her maths and reading?
I hate keeping children in at break, because it means I lose my breaktime too.

How much has she progressed in terms of sub levels/levels?

Since I do playground duty every break there is no one to supervise children if I kept them in ...but I would have spoken to parents much earlier in the year as I've had to do with a couple of children this year - some have home school diaries that go home each night for this reason.

Every break duty?
Why?

We have separate infant and junior playgrounds and as there are only two infant teachers so we do duty every day.

Thank Body and Goblin for your replies.

I understand the not keeping her in at break because its your break also. However, what would you do to get her to achieve her potential?

Dd has never had any problems with her reading and is 3a, writing 3b and maths 3c.

Trouble is dd's school prides itself on being an 'outstanding progressive school' and only does homework logs based around a theme, so dd has had no maths homework the entire year. Therefore, we have had nothing to assess her progress at home as we manage to get her to create very good homework projects - its just the school can get her to do the same in class.

mrz - how would you get a bright child to produce work in class?

Should also point out that dd has had some problems with a child in her class this year who had managed to get all the other girls to exclude dd from play etc. (small village school). This child also stole some material from dd's DT project which resulted in dd being distraught as she felt her work was incomplete without the material she had bought herself for the project.

There really isn't a single answer as what works for one may not work for another.
Flattery, bribery, threats whatever it takes. I would certainly warn the child that if I thought they weren't trying I would inform home and do it ...
I would set targets for how much I wanted producing (minimum) and praise children who meet my expectations. I had a boy last year who was writing one or two sentences at the beginning of the year and once he saw that other children's work was being held up for examples he started to produce 2 pages.

Have to say that my ds went to this school and we had a similar situation with him - i.e. he'd get away with doing the bare minimum in class but get the results in SATs.

As soon as he went into YR 6 in middle school he seemed to change and as a result has had 3 positive referrals this year and has just got a 6c in his maths level 6 exam.

I can only hope the same will happen for dd.

Thing is, your DD's levels are pretty good for a child at the end of Y3. The national expectation for the end of Y3 is 3c and it's a 3b for the end of Y4. Traditionally Y3 is a year when children seem to progress at a slower rate and there are all sorts of reasons that this happen. It is a shame that your DD's teacher has waited until now to let you know that she hasn't produced enough written work to show what she is capable of. However, there are another 3 weeks of term in most parts of England so it isn't too late for your DD to make an effort to produce more.

My Y4 class were fairly reluctant, messy, haphazard writers at the start of the year. Fast-forward to now and they have pretty much all made progress at a vastly accelerated rate. Some of it will be down to how things are in class i.e. clear expectations (and consequences if expectations aren't met due to children making the wrong choices), high level of communication with parents, the promise of being able to write in pen if handwriting is consistently neat and joined, lots of opportunities to publish work and... the clincher for my class, golden time only starts when all the week's work is complete (obviously differentiated, I'm not that mean!). I'm not a fan of keeping children in at playtime but will ask them to come back early at lunchtime to finish work off and have also been known to ask parents to come and sit with their child at the end of the day to get something finished. Work goes home if incomplete or else is put on display in its incomplete state (being a fan of published work and end products in Literacy I tend to give children something to work towards along with a deadline - whatever they've produced by that time goes on the wall... they learn pretty quickly!).