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Primary education

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Original poster

my child reads and write at top level, but her Phonics group is not!!!

348 replies

B4r4joon · 10/12/2012 15:12

My daughter is a very bright child at Y1...she is reading and writing very well...however when it came to grouping them, she is not been located in the top group in Phonics, although she reads the same level and writes the same as those children on the top group. This is very confusing for her amd me, as I dont understand on what basis this happened. She can be at times shy and she observes her peers very well and learn from them as she is bi-lingual. In the gropu she is in now, the difference between the level she reads and the level of some other children is huge...perhaps 7 colour reading band!!!

This has affecte dmy childs confidence as she thinks she hasnt been good enough, or why she is reading the same book as her reading partner, and he/she is in another group. ALl confusing for me, I am gonna talk to the teacher tomorrow, and I dont know how to say it. i dont want to convey that I dont trust their judgment, but this is gonna hold my child back and crashes her confidence, as the groups are gonna stay the same until the end of teh year! Can I ask the teacher to move my child to the other group? Is Phonics the knowledge that they learn to apply to their writing and reading, so how can she read and write higher than her phonics knowledge? She is already reading sounds that she has not been officially taught, by working it out on herself....

OP posts:
sittinginthesun · 15/12/2012 20:59

Sorry, I was thinking of my son's year 4 class - and was talking about years rather than levels.

I totally get it with history etc. I'm just wondering about maths. If a child is working on measuring area on 3D shapes, and is sitting with a child who is struggling with the basic concept of measurement, or a child measuring area on 2D shapes, surely they would see what the other children on their table were doing, and compare? Would this be better or worse than working in a separate group?

mrz · 15/12/2012 21:08

They don't have to do the same work just because they are at the same table. At the end of the lesson both children can explain what they did in their task.

simpson · 15/12/2012 21:08

Sittinginthesun - I do agree with you on that point. Things like phonics, guided reading, literacy and numeracy should be streamed IMO as then the child is working alongside kids at their level.

I would hate my child to be with some high flying kids sitting near her, to make her feel she was not coping Sad

simpson · 15/12/2012 21:10

And yes numeracy could have one group of kids learning to recognise their numbers, one group of kids doing number bonds to 10 and another group doing number bonds to 100 all within one lesson.

Not quite sure how a literacy lesson(or phonics) could be differentiated though...(sure it can,it's just that I am not a teacher obviously!!)

mrz · 15/12/2012 21:13

Fire of London would possibly be taught in Y1 or 2 learnandsay
but older children have to be taught other skills

learnandsay · 15/12/2012 21:19

Which other skills? Reading from Pepys' diary is reading from a primary source. I'd be interested if there's any primary school aspect of history which can't be studied through the lens of soldiers and their families.

mrz · 15/12/2012 21:22

it's too narrow a focus

sittinginthesun · 15/12/2012 21:25

Learnandsay - with any luck, you'll love the history teaching in primary. I don't know a single child who doesn't enjoy the topic work. Tudors, Egyptians, Aztecs, Space Race (not many soldiers on the moon Wink). It's all mixed in with art, literacy, dance as well as the factual stuff. They lap it up.

learnandsay · 15/12/2012 21:28

As I said before, I'd rather have a child know a lot about soldiers and their families throughout history (if said child was only interested in soldiers) than refuse to engage in history lessons. And, no, if the soldiers' upbringings, surroundings, family fortunes, their medical treatments, their diets, their transportation, accommodation, their pensions, their rewards and recognitions throughout history are all taken into consideration it needn't be a narrow focus at all. Soldiers and their families are people. They had interesting and varied lives and those lives can be used (admittedly by an imaginative teacher) as a leaver to allow a narrowly focussed child to examine a wide variety of circumstances.

mrz · 15/12/2012 21:31

It's like saying a child is interested in addition so lets not bother with multiplication, division, subtraction, shapes, measure, data handling, coordinates etc

mam29 · 15/12/2012 21:32

I dont think dd has done great fire of london.

year 1 she did project on ireland.

History as castles. which shes repeating again in new school as mixed yera 1/2 class and they rotate topics every other year.

also new school call it a thematic curriculum all linked.

only science, numeracy and literacy are taught as stand alone subjects.

they dont calle the top/bottom tables but as told by her old teacher yes shes at bottom.

they were shapes or colours. new schools has animals.
new school also encourages floor work.

its very informal and hands on learning.

learnandsay · 15/12/2012 21:32

Not many soldiers on the moon. Too true. But the race to land on the moon was locked up in the Cold War and the race to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles, (soldiers again.)

mrz · 15/12/2012 21:33

We did Space this term in Y1 and I've taught Aztecs/Mayan linked to Chocolate in Y2 and

sittinginthesun · 15/12/2012 21:37

DS's teacher said the best thing about the Aztecs was the chocolate.

We actually had a homework to make hot chocolate. Grin

sittinginthesun · 15/12/2012 21:39

Actually, thinking about it, Rainforests was all about chocolate too...

Our school's take on history and geography is an alternative to soldiers I suppose.

learnandsay · 15/12/2012 21:41

It's like saying a child is interested in addition so lets not bother with multiplication, division, subtraction, shapes, measure, data handling, coordinates etc

I don't think that it is, because every period in the history of civilisation has had its soldiers and by including their families the pupil is able to examine both civilian and military life in any period of history. (Also much of western history is recorded by great soldiers or their biographers.)

In the case of addition, if I had a child who for some unknown reason, was obsessed with addition and refused to consider any other form of calculation then I'd try to express as much of the problem as possible in terms of addition. It could be done in terms of repeated addition for multiplication. Division could be seen in terms of adding sufficient quantities of the divisor together. I don't know how the pupil would react to a remainder. I can't think of how coordinates would be handled in terms of addition, but I have ideas for shapes, data handling and measurement.

IWipeArses · 15/12/2012 21:42

You could teach quite a lot through the medium of chocolate. If one was so inclined.

simpson, the problem with streaming, is that the children will be aware of who sits on what table and that they do that for a reason. Rather than having their individual quirks, all the children are pigeon-holed. They are aware of the differences, in nursery they all knew which children still wore nappies.

mrz · 15/12/2012 21:45

I linked chocolate to rainforests, fair trade, advertising, design and senses.

learnandsay · 15/12/2012 21:47

sittinginthesun the obsession with soldiers is a hypothetical situation about teaching an imaginary child history if his only interests are soldiers, dinosaurs and aeroplanes. And said child, if he is not engaged will insist on disrupting the class and creating havoc.

I believe it's possible to teach a child enough history to have a very wide-ranging understanding of different periods in history and the historical timeline by concentrating on soldiers and their families.

Feenie · 15/12/2012 21:48

Hmm Have you been drinking, learnandsay? Grin

learnandsay · 15/12/2012 21:53

Cheers, Feenie. What's the matter? Have you some aversion to soldiers?

mrz · 15/12/2012 21:54

"the obsession with soldiers is a hypothetical situation about teaching an imaginary child history if his only interests are soldiers, dinosaurs and aeroplanes. And said child, if he is not engaged will insist on disrupting the class and creating havoc." and teach him that disrupting the class is rewarded by doing something he wants to do rather than what all the other children are doing ...good life skill

learnandsay · 15/12/2012 21:59

I'm not sure that that's true because I thought I'd diverted him early on. Initially he didn't want to study history at all, because

"history is boring!"

Thump, thump, whack, whack.

So what do you like?
Aeroplanes, soldiers and dinosaurs.

Well, in the Great Fire of London the soldiers pulled down the houses....

simpson · 15/12/2012 22:03

Mrz - exactly, the child needs to learn that sometimes they learn things as a group rather than what floats the invidual childs boat iyswim.

It is up to each teacher to make the lessons appealing.

mrz · 15/12/2012 22:03

" Initially he didn't want to study history at all, because

"history is boring!"

Thump, thump, whack, whack.

"So what do you like?"

Nowt!
thump, thump, whack, whack

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