Low Aspirations

[IndigoBell]

Bloody hell I'm cross.

Why do teachers have such low aspirations?

How dare DDs teacher be happy with her attainment. Happy - as in rushed out of school to tell me how well she'd done in her latest test.

On track to almost get a C at GCSEs - and he's happy :(

I hate school. Every bit of it.

There is no expectation that children will do well - only that they'll make a set amount of progress each year.

Children are always told they're brilliant and wonderful - they're never told they're not doing well and they're actually going to have to work hard if they want to achieve something.

No expectations that a child will do well :(

The culture here sucks.

School thinks it's better to have a failing happy child - then a child who works hard :(

But because they make school so fun and engaging she refuses to let me take her out and teach her at home :(

Why are you pooh-poohing the idea of confidence?

Because she doesn't have a confidence problem.

The reason she can't read isn't due to lack of confidence. The reason she couldn't do a level 2 paper in Sep wasn't due to lack of confidence. It was because she couldn't read.

The reason he thought she should be able to do a level 2 paper was because her Y3 teacher had inflated her grade and said she was a level 2.

And by Jan he really should have known that.

But instead he invalidated the Jan results, and inflated her grade, which does not help her at all.

I hope he has a very uncomfortable pupil progress meeting this term where he has to explain why she's supposedly gone backwards by so much.

I know what you mean Indigo - we were just discussing how the school lets kids 'coast' rather then stretching them.

On the other hand, to give another perspective, my TA will read the questions in a maths test next week for one of my pupils.

I know that this child struggles to read and write. I have documented evidence for that from guided reading, from literacy lessons and from reading and writing assessments. Their levels for reading and writing are, correctly, well below the norm for their age.

HOWEVER, I also know, from day to day maths work (which I assess continually), both verbal and written in numbers and diagrams, that this child is working at or above the level expected for their age in maths. On the day of the test, I want to know about their maths ability, without the data obtained from the test being overly influenced by their reading ability (which I already know about, quite independently). So they will have the 'word' questions read to them - they won't be 'helped', it's not about confidence, it's about trying to measure maths ability independently of reading ability when assessing maths. The whole reason for doing this is that I am determined that this child will NOT coast in maths, but will be challenged to the full by being given work at their real MATHS ability rather than by having the work they are given artificially limited by their reading difficulties (this is a child who works at 2 full levels - 6 sublevels - higher in maths than they do in reading and writing).

I am not saying that Indigo's DD should have had a reader for a maths test BUT there are sometimes good reasons for doing so (and the rubric of more formal tests such as optional SATs allows it).

No, teacherwithtwokids - Indigo's dd had a reader for the questions on a reading paper!

Apologies! I know that the first post on this thread WAS about maths and I had somehow lost sight along the way of the fact it was a reading test where the questions were read....

Argh. That's not acceptable.

It is hard to believe, so no wonder you got the wrong end of the stick!

I don't see how a child could fail to have a lack of confidence at reading if they can barely read... It's perfectly possible to underperform due to a lack of confidence at a specific thing, or to learn more slowly even than you are capable, because of a lack of confidence at a specific thing, without lacking confidence in all areas of your life. Lack of confidence in one area normally results in attempts to downplay the importance of that thing, or to avoid doing it, or to not try too hard in case you still fail, all of which IndigoBell's dd seems to do. She is, surely, therefore, lacking in confidence? Whether the school is doing the right things to help increase her confidence in this area or her will to keep perservering rather than let herself give up, is certainly highly debatable, but I don't think the school is wrong to think she is lacking in confidence at reading. I'm also not convinced that the school telling her she is rubbish at reading and will fail to get anywhere in life if she doesn't crack it in the next year or two will help her learn to read, or inspire her to knuckle down...

(or confidence in...).

Was the reading test testing content comprehension or the actual mechanics of reading?

How do you have multiple choice questions in a reading test?

(Or have I misconstrued what I read about having questions s read to her..)

www.st-josephs-pickering.n-yorks.sch.uk/SATs%20papers/Optional%20SATs/Year%204/English/Feet%20First%20Answer%20Booklet%20-%20Year%204%20Optional%20SAT.pdf

On the 'confidence' thing...

When someone says 'Oh, X lacks confidence in reading', what this MIGHT be doing is disguising the fact that 'X cannot read'.

A teacher who says 'we need to improve X's confidence' MAY still think that X can do the task, but that their lack of confidence is getting in the way. It would be worrying if a teacher, after a whole term, thought that a child who could not read merely lacked confidence IYSWIM?

On the other hand, if the teacher has independent evidence that child X CAN read but is failing to demonstrate that under particular circumstances (one of my pupils reads much better 1 to 1 than in a guided reading session, as fear of being teased means that this child does not read aloud in front of their peers with any confidence) then it IS a lack of confidence rather than a lack of competence. It is important from the teaching point of view to be able to identify the difference....

{To be honest, I find your whole attitude deeply confusing, as Math has pointed out extensively.

If Indigo is coming across as confusing, then I think it's a mark of the sheer frustration that she feels as a parent after all that she has been flannelling she has put up with over the years - which I can fully understand.

I'm asking purely out of interest, Sunscorch - but do you have children yourself?},

To be honest Sunscroch whenever you post you seem to be going around with a red marker trying to catch the OP. I am not talking just about this thread!!
Feenie asked you if you have any children but you ignored the post completely!! i feel sorry for your pupils :(

Indigo: I thank you for starting this thread and I wish you and your dd all the best. I am sure she will be fine because she has you as a parent.

I really don't know what to think anymore. I really like this teacher, and did think he was quite good.

Ragged: I see what you mean about confidence. But what he should have done is used the TA to prompt her to attempt the next question, and to motivate her throughout the test etc. rather than reading the questions which isn't allowed and therefore invalidates the test.

And if he knew the test results were invalid he should have totally disregarded them, and certainly shouldn't have shared them with me.

Teacher - I think it's very worrying that a term in he's still attributing it to a lack of confidence.

Maybe he's still lying to me. Making a story up to fit the facts. He now needs to justify himself to the SLT, so he has to come up with some reason.

It's even possible it was an honest mistake. The TA read the questions out but wasn't meant to. And rather than admit an honest mistake he's making up an excuse.

I think really anything is possible.

When DD did the reading test last week, she did it in the corridor so she could have extra time and so she could read it out loud. And he went to check on her every so often.

he told me he was surprised at how much her reading deteriotated by the end of the paper. Surely that shouldn't surprise him? Does he not know she has a very limited concentration span? And then her brain overheats and she can't think anymore.

When we read at home she is very variable as to what and how much she can read. But I have never ever got her to read more than 2 pages of a chapter book. And we pretty much always read till her brain is fried and she can't read anymore.

Her brain doesn't work properly. She has this really spiky thing going on. When how much she can read varies from almost nothing to quite well. Her reading ability over the course of a week probably does vary from a 1b to a 2b.

(I think this is due to her diet, and are currently experimenting a lot with this to see if I can eliminate her brain fog)

But I guess if we both heard her read 3 different times to 3 different abilities, I'm remembering the worst incident and he's remembering the best incident.

It's not really clear what a fair reading level to report would be when she is so variable. (but certainly the level 3 he told me was not fair)

He doesn't appreciate the full history. That even before she started nursery it was obvious she had memory problems. That she started getting extra help for her reading in reception. That it is not a confidence problem, nor a teaching problem, nor a lack of practice problem. But proper severe dyslexia.

Oh well. At least now I can stop expecting anything from him, and I'll just continue to work with her at home.

Thank you for that Mrz. So the test was not to asses reading fluency? It assessed comprehension of a text as opposed to the mechanics of decoding?

A few more questions:
How has spelling been taught in her classrooms through the years? Are random words assigned based on the topic of the reading material, or are words assigned based on word structure in a systematic progression?

Have you ever run across a book called 'Is This Your Child?' by Dr Doris Rapp? (allergies, food intolerances, environmental sensitivities,

Math - spelling has been taught fine. The problem is all DD not the teaching.

She's had 3 years of read, write, inc which is a highly structured systematic reading and writing program. All her spelling lists come from RWI.

Once you get to level 2 reading tests are always about comprehension. They're never done as listening to a child read.

I haven't seen that book. Thanks. I'll look into it.

It is an older book but very comprehensive.

You might like to look at this (dyslexia/school opinion)

If the spelling is done according to a phonics-based system then it is probably not the best way to teach your DD. You may find that your DD responds better to a system that presents spellings in a systematic way according to word roots, affixes, and morphology (a 'big picture' approach) and direct, explicit instruction, one rule at a time, as opposed to a system that requires a level of intuition about sound/letter correspondence. People with dyslexia do not intuit much about written language and its relationship to sound.

It's to test both reading fluency and comprehension Mathanxiety ... the child needs to be able to read the text and answer the questions which is why an adult should not be reading it for the child.

Comprehension and fluency are two completely separate elements.

that make up the whole

Math - you're still not understanding the scale of her problems.

Remember the 45 high frequency words that you used to have to learn in reception? (I,a, the, me, my, was, am, at the, etc, etc). She was still learning to spell them in Y3.

In Y2 one of her IEP targets was to learn to read 20 of those words. She had 6 months to complete the target. And she failed to achieve it. This is with lots of 1:1 help.

She has had 1:1 help with reading every day since reception. And still made virtually no progress. Even in reception it was obvious she was dyslexic.

In fact even before she started nursery, when she was 3 it was obvious she had memory problems.

Last year there was no a single word she could spell right consistently. Not even 2 letter words.

It did not matter how you taught her. She had no memory.

Now her memory's improving, and you can see from the writing sample I posted above, her spelling has improved immensely. She now often gets 2 and 3 letter words right. And other words as well.

Last year not a single word would have been spelt correctly, or even close enough to read, and there would have been no vowels at all.

Mrz -- why try assessing them together in the case of a dyslexic student? What can a teacher hope to learn about comprehension where fluency might be a huge stumbling block?

hopefully the teacher isn't relying on a national test alone to learn anything about a pupil and by the third term knows their pupils well from day to day interactions

Nevertheless, the tests are there for a purpose.

Without the intervention of a TA reading the text, it seems to me it might be impossible or at least very difficult to gauge comprehension but that is apparently unacceptable -- and IB doesn't seem to be able to trust the teacher's own assessments of her DD based on day to day interactions.

He's not trying to give her a comprehension level, he's trying to give her a reading level.

In class she does do comprehension exercises by having the text read to her.

There's nothing wrong with her comprehension.

But, the point is she can't read. And her reading level needs to reflect that.