Bright reception child

[millymum34]

My daughter had a new reception teacher mid January. She requested a meeting with me & asked me if I knew my daughter is very bright. It depends what you define very bright I said? (She is indeed great at coloring I thought!!!).

Apparently since the time the new teacher came on board she picked up my daughter can read oxford reading book level 10 fluently, recognised a triangular prism and said her 2x tables in class faultless. This was ALL news to me; she had been given books level 3 before and always read them nicely but nothing special.

I do lots of things with my little girl and never noticed this, neither did the previous teachers. Obviously I tested her at home after our meeting and indeed she reads those books (even though not suited for her age) faultless.

Can children change like this? I felt actually really bad not knowing the potential of my own child?

Has she changed? It sounds more like she just hadn't been asked the right questions till now. I'm sure lots of children don't get asked the right questions. But I'm glad she's got a switched-on teacher now. Good luck to both of you.

She probably not changed, you've just not notice because you just accept your dd as she is.

I was told after 6 weeks in reception DD is working at Yr1 level. I refuse to push dd, I just let her do and go at her pace.

As for her reading Level 10 books, is she just reading the words, does she understand what they mean. The school my children are at will not move them up levels until they have both the reading and understanding of the books before they go up a level.

You are lucky they have noticed :) took til yr 2 for teachers to spot my DS was bright....goodness knows how! You just have to talk to him for five minutes!

By the looks of it if she'd had the same teacher as before she never would have noticed.

We had something similar with DS in his last year of nursery. They started giving out reading books and within a few weeks he'd gone from level 1 to reading Roald Dahl books.

Like you, we felt bad that we hadn't noticed that he'd somehow taught himself to read but actually I think for him there was a point were reading just suddenly 'clicked'. His memory is phenomenal and if he sees a word once he will always recognise it again so the pace he learnt at was just very quick.

He's in reception now and his teachers have been careful to check he is understanding everything he is reading - which he is.

I think his reading just developed very rapidly once he'd started - maybe it's the same for your DD.