DD yr 1 working at a higher level at home than school - will this sort itself out?

[DevonDiva]

DD had had a lot of trouble adjusting to year 1 (had a great time in year R and really came on academically and socially). The teacher is concerned about the quality of her work, but she is more than capable of doing much better at home. For instance for writing at home she can write short stories (don't think we'll be getting them published any time soon but they are intelligible, have a beginning, middle and end, some full stops, adjectives and around two thirds of words are spelt correctly and the rest are phonetically sounded out). Again her maths is fine at home - she's struggled a bit with the concepts but is now much better and whizzes through her homework. In both these cases she is working independantly at home - I'm not looking over her shoulder or helping. Her work at school is of a very markedly poorer quality (although I still don't think too bad for her age). I would expect some difference but not so great. I think the reasons are a mixture of lack of confidence and the fact she gets distracted. She's in a very high achieving class of mixed year 1s and 2s which I don't think helps.

I'm not sure what I can do except try and build her confidence at home. Is this common and do things generally even out? Any ideas? Her teachers seem to be getting quite frustrated with her which doesn't feel great either.

This often happens, and it can be quite patchy too. My DD is rubbish at writing in English in class because she is very bored with the subject ("My Weekend" has been on the Monday menu for three years now) but will happily write "novels" with illustrations on topics of her choosing when she has some time to herself at home.

Thanks Bonsoir. I think interest is another thing - she's said she finds some of the topics work on quite boring (and I can't say I blame her - they've been doing fire engines for ever!).

I just tend not to bother hugely with what goes on at school and make my own judgements as to DD's overall progress. Sometimes she will make "startling progress" at school in the teacher's opinion, and I know that she has been progressing steadily behind the scenes at home and has managed to carry that over to class.

With maths, I find that playing a lot of games at home (Snakes & Ladders when she was little, Connect 4, Monopoly etc) is great for confidence - they gain speed in mental maths when playing games without seemingly having to work at it.

Yes, good idea. I've just bought her a few maths games. I think her confidence is particularly poor when it comes to maths, and she's surrounded by kids who seem to find it easy, and do their 7x tables in their free time "for fun!".

Inevitably, practice at home (in whatever shape or form) carries over into the classroom and some DCs play a lot of number/spatial games. Does your DD like Lego? That's quite good for a lot of things, in particular if she builds a model from instructions.

She doesn't mind lego but she tends to be a bit, er, "free form" - i.e think hugh unstable tower affair with a zebra stuck on top. She'll do hama beads to a pattern though, so that might be good. I don't think maths will ever be her thing, but don't think there's actually a problem as such. She quite enjoys doing little maths games with me, but find the whole thing stressful at school.