Please decode the teacher 's comments about my daughter and more

[AutumnGlory]

I went to parents evening the other day and instead of 15 minutes the teacher spent less than 10 minutes with me, she showed me some of her work and said she is doing well in phonics and getting better every day ....(she is 5, Y1 and not a fluent reader yet. I was asked in September by the school's SENCO to work harder with my daughter at home and try and teacher her the '100 common words' before Christmas. Apparently she should have know them all by now)... Anyway, teacher said she also is we're she is supposed to be at maths. Than she moves on to behaviour and this is the part I need help decoding. Teacher says: - she is not pretending to be silly as much as she used to at the beginning of Y1 ...but she didn't elaborate further and I'm not sure what she means by 'pretend to be silly' why no just say 'being silly?' Or does it mean the same and I am getting muddled up for English not being my 1st language?

You are over thinking things.

Sounds like she just means your daughter has settled down after a few silly incidents in the first few weeks.

Don't give it another thought.

Doesn't sound like anything to worry about. I would say it just means she's not being silly anymore, where as she was a bit silly at the start of the year.

Other thing is, the parent before me was there for over half an hour discussing in detail her child progress and the mother wants asking anything it was the teacher talking on stop...when I got m less than 10 minutes, I was very puzzled because although I don't know this parent at all, from my observations of her child playing with mine after school in the nearby playground, this child always came across as very sensible, with a amazing vocabulary and language, which I associated with some kind of cleverness. Why do the teacher spent so little with me since my daughter is apparently 'struggling'? I was competing this with a friend whose daughter goes to other school and se said she feels that he teachers spend more time with parents whose children are doing better.... Do you agree and could explain why? Or it is just me being paranoid?

Could mean that your daughter was trying to pretend that she wasn't as clever or able as she is. 'I can't do this because I'm too silly/stupid/baby-like' in other words. Now she is a bit more confident she isn't resorting to that strategy. Or it could be 'silly' in the sense of childish misbehaviour, as AitchDee suggests. Whatever, things are improving, so congratulate yourselves on that!

Sorry for all the typos, yes I was happy with what the teacher said, just gutted that I always forget to ask any relevant question, my mind goes totally blank when I get these conferences

" I was competing this with a friend whose daughter goes to other school and se said she feels that he teachers spend more time with parents whose children are doing better.... Do you agree and could explain why?"

I've found the opposite to be true. The shortest appointments are the ones when a child is doing well. The longer ones are when there are more issues to discuss.

A more likely explanation is that the teacher spent 30 minutes with Parent 1, realised what the time was, and then tried to speed up for the next appointments so that she wasn't there all night.

In my experience, teachers often have no option but to spend time with some parents as they are so pushy and won't leave even after they have used up their allocated time! Whether or not there is an issue with the child is irrelevant. Half-an-hour seems a bit needy to me. If you want more feedback, I'd go armed with a few more questions for the teacher next time. BTW I'm not implying that you were underprepared this time!

If you still have questions, write them down and ask to have another meeting with the teacher

But parent 1 seemed so relaxed and wasn't talking or asking, the teacher was on and on and on....anyway, reading other thread I just remembered the rhea her said that DD rushes her work when she doesn't feel like doing it and loses focus easily...it means laziness doesn't it? Every teacher she has ever had (being in nursery since 2) compare her to boys, being active and all that, this s the first teacher who didn't make this comparison so far.

I think it's difficult to compare your appointment to someone else's, when I'm conducting parents eve I sometimes just get caught up speaking to some parents and end up there all night! There are other parents who I see and speak too regularly so their appointments sometimes go a little quicker! (Do you see teacher regularly just in a casual way - picking up/dropping off each day?) I also try to bring up any behaviour issues on advance if parents eve, unless they are a newer behaviour, say if your dc hadn't settled down by week 5/6 I may have spoken to you already, I assume that she probably had settled down (stopped being silly?) so it may be xn oversight that the teacher never mentioned it before.
Please speak to the teacher with regards to your concerns, any questions that have arisen since parents evening. On the most part it's just talking through things again or making sure all detail is given (10 mins to share all that info is going some, 1 parent even told me I talked too fast and could i please slow down!)
I'd be more than happy to sit down with someone again, or even just have a 2 min chat at the end of the day just to ensure everything was ok

No - lack of focus could just mean that the work doesn't interest her. It could always be too easy! If she is an active learner, more passive learning (and children are expected to do more of this as they get older) can be a struggle at first. BTW, more fool the teacher who has got half-an-hour to spend on each parent - they'd be there all night!

You know I don't think you can necessarily read anything into the time spent.
I have been in and out in less than 5 minutes. I've also had 30+ minutes, (without there being any problems) on the same child, same teacher.

ust that the first one there was nothing after saying "she's doing very well" and for the second there were a few things that she felt needed explaining before dd came home and said her version of what was happening.(as our Biology teacher used to say before he started the topic of reproduction "your parents won't appreciated being told you're doing sex with Mr. X")

I've also had an otherwise quick appointment, where as we got up to leave we've said something like "Dd really enjoyed the photos they were taking last week" and got a long description of what they were doing, what dd had said and that sort of thing.

The stopped "pretending to be silly" I'd put down as possibly she was being a bit of a form clown at the beginning. Being silly for attention/reaction/laughs/friendship, and the teacher had felt that it was an act and was now comfortable in herself not to feel she had to do this. So a good thing.

[Smile]

Dewe has it perfectly less silly is good, pretending to be silly was very likely a bit of an act because she lacks confidence.

As for time spent, I've had very short meetings as DD2 is perfect at school. Not at home.

And very long ones for dyslexic,socially inept DD1.

However the record was 5 words.

Teacher sweeps in "Can you stop DD1 fussing?"
Me , teacher sweeps out before I could collect my thoughts.

The answer was actually no. The teacher is very good, but her very elaborate lessons had too many fun distractions from writing that DD finds hard and too many things to muddle up. She got flustered and never finished anything .

Maybe it's about language - more to do with her behaviour than her, so she was being silly but she's not silly?