Ds dis-engaging from class-room & tests - what to do [confused]

[CubsMummy]

Hi
I'd be grateful for all your thoughts, experience or advice. Just after the last October half-term we heard from my DS Y2 form teacher that he disengages at times from classroom activities or tests. Sometimes he just puts his pencil/book down and refuses to talk about what is wrong or why he won't take part.

Since October we (teacher and us working together) have jointly tried many different tactics to try and get him back on track and haven't even got close to the truth or effected much change.

During this time he's been still attending Explore Learning after school twice a week and loves it very much. Reports from EL say that he engages fully, asks for help and his parent reports every 6 weeks have him achieving v good results against the national curriculum for maths and literacy.

We're now thinking of employing a child psychologist as we are at a total loss and he's slowly being moved down sets in his class because of his non-participation at times.

Any thoughts or advice gratefully received

Xx

It sounds very much like he's disengaging because he feels hes 'already done it' and he wouldn't necessaryily be able to tell a teacher that. Explore learning is very much computer based tasks which he would find more engaging and is 1:1. Consider whether its possible to stop the Explore Learning for a time to see if he then re engages with the teacher. They need to be more pro active in finding out why he downs tools (check hunger, boredom as obvious things) My ds started to do this at one point and it turned out he was too hot! Rule out things like getting cramp in his hands when writing. Sometimes children do this when they need to move around, finding it uncomfortable to sit still for too long in one position. Ask school to get their senco to observe him so that they have a definite indicator of what preceeds the event, the event itself and what happens immediately afterwards.

Oh, and make sure his eyesight & hearing are fine, my ds seemed to totally disengage in class at one point, turned out he couldn't see the white board and his eyesight degenerated very quickly over the course of just 1 month

He is 7 and he goes to after school tuition twice a week? Whatever for? I suspect you might be pushing him too much which is why he's tuning out at school. I also wouldn't expect Explore Learning to tell you if he was tuning out there too as they have a business to run.

Thanks for your comments LePetitPrince, we started sending him because we had little feedback on his achievement at school. Turns out that he's had this 'dis-engagement' problem since reception but no one told us. In fact in his Yr 1 parents evening his teacher spoke about a different child!
Xx

For some children the difference between reception and year 1 can be quite marked as reception is part of the early years foundation stage and year 1 tends to be more formalised. It may well be that he dislikes tests and the timing of such things.