Refusing to put dc on next reading level or even assess

[Blueschool]

Dc in in year 2. Has been on same reading level since September.

My dc may not be good at a lot at school, but reading is dc strong point. Not the top of class but quite advanced. Not just my opinion but her previous teachers and helpers.

Her current level is not a challenge anymore. Mentioned this weeks ago. Given a huge list basically telling me why dc is a crap reader in teachers opinion. Very surprised as one area always was praised on reading.

Took it on chin and we worked hard to resolve the issues like "not enough expression".

Dc reading is just fine. I can not find not fault.

My comment I wrote last week was the "book was not a challenge". Teacher took a whole page up in dd reading record to again tell me how crap dc is.

I felt the comments were utterly unfair and do not reflect reality at all. She also told me I could buy books to read at home! Very unfair assumption dc reads for pleasure all the time and has 100+ at home.

She said IF she wants she will assess her after Christmas she will.

My issues are

• I thought parents and teachers were meant to be in partnership with education. How is this a partnership?

• IF dc is genuinely reading badly at school WHY? Why is there such a difference? Why is her educational environment not making her feel confident and supported to show her real abilty?

• Another parent has told me they have had similar issues as the teacher gets herself stressed. Im sorry, but holding a child back because you are stressed is quite something.

What should I do?

As I said before, DS is very shy/reserved.

He was not confident with reading with his teacher and did not perform at school like he did at home. It did take me a while to come to this conclusion though.

Can she take in one of her own books from home to read with the teacher?

Or make an appt to talk to the teacher but state that whilst she can do these things at home, she is obviously not doing them at school and is there anything she can suggest. Talk about how shy she is and maybe this is what is causing the difference iyswim...

Also as someone else has said on this thread my DS is now in yr3 (so KS2) and I now look back a bit at the fuss I made talks with the teacher (although only about 4 chats in the whole school year so not too bad!!) once in KS2 there is a whole range of books that he can read.

Mrz - that is most odd then. As she has obv. Had a child go through school before....

Yes, OK - in which case, if you're correctly assessing her ability yourself, it's a failure on the teacher's part to assess properly.

My ds also plateaued (sp.? Call myself an English teacher! ) in year 2 - he was being horrendously bullied & his teacher totally failed to deal with it.

He didn't like or trust her, so he basically took his bat home, & he also failed to shine in her class as a consequence.

I would say that not agreeing to assess her in a 1:1 arguably comes under not differentiating for her effectively if this is the case.

I still say you need to arrange an appointment to have it out with her - if the parent of one of my students had spent three days thrashing out their dissatisfaction with my teaching on an online forum, I'd certainly want to discuss it with them properly & get it sorted!

Forgot to say that I don't know if this is the norm but DS still does guided reading and does it with books several levels below where he is.

A child is a free reader once over lime level. But they do not allow a child to be a free reader in KS1 so DS got lime level book after lime level book in yr2...

That's funny. If my daughter got the same level books ad infinitum on account of a policy the books would be binned. (Incidentally, what do you do if your daughter asks you what the words are which English stole from the Roman language?)

Im going to sound like a massive wimp now.. .but I feel quite intimidated by the teacher.

Yes, just pathetic I know.

I have heard the way she speaks to other parents and I just dont want to be on the receiving end.I do not feel she approachable.

To date my only real interaction with her has been polite smiles at drop off as well as the remark in the reading record about the book not being a challenge.

Im torn with how to proceed. Honestly Say how I feel?

Only say a small part of how I feel?

Say nothing and keep going at home for the easy life? As you say Simpson perhaps this wont even feel like a big deal in a few months anyway?

In school we would talk about the root of the word whether Latin, Greek, Anglo Saxon or more recent editions from around the world.

I know soooo how you feel!!

I dreaded talking to the teacher (for DS). DD's teacher (in reception) is lovely and listens to everything I say and takes things on board and I do over what she says to me iyswim.

Personally I would leave it a couple of week (but I am a chicken!!) and have a word before the school breaks up for Xmas.

You should never be made to feel like that by your child's teacher, that's not on.

Just make an appointment, be polite & ask lots of open questions - maybe take dh with you so you can back each other up?

I would think asking the teacher to assess your dd on a 1:1 basis is an entirely reasonable request, if she hasn't been assessed since September (when a shy child may well not perform brilliantly with a new, rather forbidding teacher).

Simpson Im so glad you understand! Its quite stressful isnt it?

Cross posted ravenAK.

I think going with dh is a brilliant idea- if we decide to bring this up with her.

Maybe I will give things a couple of weeks and see what happens first.

Simpson,

I have in my current class a very shy child. I have her in a guided reading group, and can use that to assess some things - decoding, for example, and use of book features such as an index and glossary. I have also read 1 to 1 woth her, but she finds even that quite intimidating.

One of the reading interventions we use is Rapid Reading - a computer-based programme in which the child reads the book into a microphone, which analyses the reading and gives scores etc. It also - most usefully for me - records the reading.

Today I was assessing this child's expression, use of voices and use of punctuatioon to guide expression in her absence - simply by listening to the recording, which she had created independently earlier in the day during one of her 3x weekly intervention periods with the literacy TA... I do this regularly both to assess her progress in general but also to establish how well the intervention is working.

I just wanted to point out that there ARE ways of assessing a shy child's reading even if their 'main reading teaching' happens in a group ... and even if the child herself has no idea whatever that the assessment is happening!

teacherwith2kids

Can you tell us more about rapid reading? Is there a way for the public to access this software?

This kind of situation happened to me, (as many of the people in this forum know.) I didn't so much feel intimidated by the teacher. She's lovely. But I didn't want to be a pain in the b*. I really thought my daughter wasn't getting anything out of the books that she was being sent home with and I spent ages explaining in graphic detail (sound by sound, word by word, characteristic by characteristic what she was reading, when and how.) Did it make any difference? No. And she was reading words like "decided", "frightened", "contents," and so on. The books she got from school said "Dan can ban a pan and fan a man." After parents evening when the teacher explained to me that my daughter can read and "gets" reading, (which I already knew,) she explained that she didn't want to rush my daughter through the reading scheme. I thought of a compromise which would be to send easy and hard scheme books in the same book bag. I was surprised by her response. The teacher has left the scheme temporarily and has started sending home non decodable Gin readers instead of the ORT floppy phonics ones. Of course I'm happy because my daughter actually learns something from these. So, I guess what I'm saying is, (propose a solution, maybe even implement it. And you never know. You might just be surprised, and pleased, by the teacher's reaction, even when you first thought there was no hope at all.)

PS, (thanks, mrz, for upthread.)

Tbh, I don't know. We use the software in school on a computer, to accelerate the progress of certain children who work on it with a specialist TA - and it has been very successful for boosting progres. I believe that mrz's school actually has the Rapid Reading books (we don't use those) but doesn't use the software.

If you wanted to replicate the experience - as in, to be able to give the teacher a sample of your child's 'home' reading [I have had a parent do this, and it was in fact very useful] - you could just record some reading with any device onto which you can record sound, and save it as a filetype that can be 'read' on other devices e.g. mp3 or similar. Rapid Reading isn't 'magical', it's just an alternative 'environment' for reading which we have found helpful in boosting children - especially boys, who like the gadgetry and the 'reward' feedback!

Looks like a scheme sold to schools by Pearson - looks like we have the Reading Assistant Software part of it and the Benchmark books. Its pricing looks very 'schooly'... ie works out fine if you use it for 10 children every week over several years, but not if you only want it for 1 child once only.

www.pearsonschoolsandfecolleges.co.uk/Primary/Literacy/AllLiteracyresources/RapidReading/RapidReading.aspx

We use the Rapid Reading books with struggling readers but don't use the software

I'm a teacher and I know parents are not always right, sometimes they are clearly deluded. As a teacher I can also say with some certainty that teachers are not always right, sometimes they are plain ignorant.
To think either must be right is a mistake. Thinking you know better than someone with some experience can be a mistake. Blind faith in a teacher can also be a mistake.
Given that my dcs teachers have over time told me totally contradictory things, I have to fall back on my own judgement and use my reason. Bluecoat could be deluded but she is at least as likely to be entirely right.

Yes I would also like to say that I don't think teachers are always right or parents are always right. Although my posts make it look as though I think parents are always right, I don't at all. However I do think that teachers who think parents should be assumed to be wrong, are always wrong about that. And the same versy vicy versy.

Actually I would like to say one more thing, which is how fanastic it is when your children have teachers which seem to absolve you from the responsibility of fretting about levels, progress etc etc. We always like to help and support our children in the normal way of things. But it is SUCH a relief to know and trust that if the teacher says X isn't doing well in Y subject, then X actually isn't doing well - as opposed to thinking Oh goodness, the teacher's got it wrong, now what do I do, shall I raise this, what's everybody else doing etc etc. Sounds a bit ridiculous but it's so restful to know you can trust a teacher's judgment and that the teacher can deal with it. And all you say is - anything I can do to help? And they usually say, no, we'll sort it but I'll let you know. We're lucky enough to have had loads of those kinds of teachers. (That does mean though that one can spot a duffer.)

Probably in the same way teachers might be able to spot a heartsink parent. Perhaps I am that parent (am sure of it in at least one of my children's y5s )

Modern children live "micro managed" lives full of activities, after school club, gymnastics, swimming, dance, pony club, rugby, football ... and then come home to an array of technology to entertain them with very little effort from themselves ...

Surely all the more reason to free children from some of the dumbed-down leveled readers described here? How sad, to have a child who is turned off by the dead weight of these endless readers. As soon as a child is a competent decoder can't they be free to access all the wonderful books that are available to them.

I'm passionate about synthetic/linguistic phonics and making sure that all children can read but the unintended consequences of holding children back is horrendous. Surely we should respect children more and encourage their excitement with book reading rather than forcing them to answer so many inane questions about Biff the Boxer etc?

Sometimes I've felt that I was straying into a thread about helping children with special needs....

I don't know if you are familiar with the children's authors Janet & Allen Ahlberg allchildrenreading (Each Peach Pear Plum, Woof, The Mighty Slide, Burglar Bill, Funnybones, Pleaee Mrs Butler, The Jolly Postman and many many more wonderful titles including the Happy Families series - Mr Biff the Boxer) but the book mentioned by the OP is not a dumbed down levelled reader it is a humorous children's book -age appropriate for the OPs child not written for reading instruction but for enjoyment. The books were so popular they were made into a Children's TV series by the BBC, as were many of the Ahlberg's wonderful texts ...hardly a dead weight.

The complaints are

1. she cannot comprehend the text.
2. she has no expression.

then I humbly submit those are not saying that she is "crap" at anything. Those suggest the girl has not demonstrated that she has reached the thresholds the teacher is looking for.

I am surprised that teacher needed a whole page to make those 2 points. Is teacher normally quite verbose? Maybe that is what she's looking for in pupils, too. Perhaps ask the teacher to demonstrate what she's looking for in comprehension & expression. I would.

I would also use the library regularly and read to her with expression.

I love j and a ahlberg books. And so does ds! However it's possible the Op's child finds it boring, and if so I agree she should be allowed to read something else - they won't suit all children! For example my ds isn't fussed on a lot of dr Seuss, though I think they are fab. He prefers other stuff. If he has a school book he doesn't like, we whizz through it and then I do my own stuff with him.