Nursery and Reception Teachers - advise please! xx

[Andratx]

Hi,

Last week I had a parent-teacher consultation for DD who is 4 and at pre-school, linked to a primary school. DD is misbehaving at Nursery; occasionally doing unkind or stupid things like throwing sand or hitting. She does this at home too, has always been like this.

I am NOT in denial about this....I told them before she started Nursery that she was bright but liked to push the boundaries. And that I was strict with her because of it. I do not let her get away with hitting, hurting etc. And they said her behaviour at Nursery was not too bad, otherwise they would have told me before.

We did have a long conversation about what I could do at home to improve things and I said I would take on board these things.

The teachers follow the same discipline technique as me - warning and then time out. But they say (I agree) that on asking her WHY she has done something naughty, she replies "I don't know"....and both they and I believe her - she really doesn't appear to know. So I know I have some work to do.

But I am wondering - I have told them several times that DD seems to be a natural reader. She can 'just' read. She has been lapping it up when her older siblings 'teach' her phonics. And she races through their reading homework (reception level). Last night she read sentences in a book like "On Tuesday my little sister broke my model. I felt cross. On Friday I lost my teddy bear. I felt lonely". I feel that she is probably on Year One (??) reading level without much teaching from me.

I asked Nursery whether they thought there might be merit in trying to run with this reading skill - letting her read at Nursery, perhaps 10 minutes 1-to-1 with a teacher sometimes, really praising her for her reading, to try to improve any negative feelings she has. BUT the teacher said they just don't do reading at Nursery because "it spoils the experience in Reception". So they don't even do vowels, or the first phonics - nothing.

My friend is a nursery teacher and she says go back to them and tell them to do reading with her. I don't want to upset the apple cart but my friend says that DD is bored. I don't necessarily feel that she is bored, but I do feel that if I can take on board their suggestions for home/parenting, they could take on board my suggestion to push her self-esteem with some reading.

What are your views please?

auntevil I'm confused by your comment " What I would be concerned about is if aspects of development were significantly higher in certain areas and weak in others."

All children develop at different rates, across all the levels. That is why the EYFS is broken down in to such broad age bands. It is fairly common for children to be stronger than some areas than others. Especially since we are assessing children in a setting very different from their home environment. Having a child that can cope with academic, predictable subjects but not so much with social interactions- (which are complex & often unpredictable) is not unusual at all.

You go on to say "If your DD can read and has good comprehension of what she is reading, why can she not understand why she has hit someone?"

That would be because completely different skills are involved! Learning to read follows very set & established rules. Once you learn letter sounds & literacy concepts the rules don't change. Social skills are a whole different ball game. Some people struggle to obtain them even into adulthood. The OP's daughter could have 1 million different reasons for hitting & it is nothing to do with her level of intelligence.

My DDs nursery didn't teach any reading skills either - but some kids arrived in reception with them because they had either learnt them at home, or gone to private day nurseries, which taught them.

From what you say your daughter has problems with her behaviour, so you think that the best way the teacher can help is by listening to her read? I would have thought that it would have been a more appropriate use of the teacher's time to engage with your child in groups, and extend other activities. Maybe then she could see what triggers your DDs negative behaviour.

I don't believe my DD1 ever got 1-1 in nursery, and certainly not 10 minutes a day. In fact in a 3hr session, with 22 kids it would be physically impossible for that to happen equally. Even assuming the other 21 could be managed by the TA.

When DD was in nursery (last year) she was listened to 121 at least once a week if not twice.

DD started nursery being able to read ORT red level books and her teacher was very good at extending her etc..

However the only gripe I had was that the HT did not believe that 3yr olds could read so it was up to me to provide all her reading books etc...

She is now in reception and reading chapter books (Roald Dahl etc) and luckily she has the same teacher she had in nursery who is aware of what she can do.

The only issue we have ATM is "sound time" when DD is quite frankly bored and does the bare minimum really but she is extended in other parts of the day 121 and in groups and is loving reception so far...

Our nursery and school are completely separate. The nursery does no literacy work at all, not even singing the abc song and the school does no literacy assessments until after Christmas in Reception. My daughter could read Dr Seuss in nursery but the fact that she could read in nursery went pretty much unnoticed until she read a story in a corridor with me. After that it still went unnoticed. I told the teachers in Reception what she could read and her reading ability still went unnoticed there too. It's only recently that she has been progressed to a level relatively similar to what she has been reading at home in the past. But now she's reading Hans Christian Andersen and chapter books from Hodder at home. I'm not sure when she'll get to those things at school. But I've long since given up hope that they'll keep developmental pace with her. At least they're in vaguely the same reading region as she is now, even if they're trailing. It's something to be grateful for.

We have a FSU (mixed nursery and reception) so some nursery children sometimes chose to join my phonic sessions to accommodate their needs when I taught reception.

yes, I do this too mrz. I have a couple who join for maths also.

learnandsay - it would be impossible for a nursery to do no literacy work at all!

Literacy skills are complex & many- but there are literally thousands of activities that promote the foundation skills needed to be a successful reader & writer. Many of these will not be obvious to the untrained eye.

So although you see that the nursery is not doing any formal reading/writing lessons (which is absolutely perfect & age appropriate) there will be a tonne of teaching & learning happening that will contribute to their literacy ability.

If you are genuinely interested in the specifics of this- let me know some of the most common activities that they do at your child's nursery & I can help you make the links to literacy learning :)

Every single activity in a nursery will have an element of literacy, many will also have maths content

I'm sure you're right. They read stories to the children. A previous nursery had alphabet posters, number posters, sang abc and so on. This one does not. It also seems incapable of listening to children reading, even if they don't need any help. Hopefully the same Reception teacher will get my second daughter and when I tell her that she can already read and what she can already read she'll understand what I mean. I don't know where this no formal assessments till after Christmas comes from. It's possible that the same teacher could get my second daughter, know she can read, and still give her books with no words in. (I'm prepared this time. If she does that whole malarky next time I'll just use my own book collection.)

I hate to break it to you but your 2nd DD might not be reading so early (although the chances are she could well be being a 2nd sibling and watching her older sister etc)....

I cannot really remember what DD did in nursery apart from re-enacting "going on a bear hunt" in the playground but whatever DD did she loved it.

She's starting already. There's no guarantee that she's going to be any good at it, but no problems so far.

in my dgs school Nursery and Reception are together in one class.There are three groups for phonics/literacy.One is for just children at the earliest stages of phonics and is all nursery children.The next [where dgs aged 4 and in nursery is] is mixed Nursery and Reception where they can blend and read cvc words and others .The third group is for children at the next stage who can read sentences and are working through ORT beyond pink.
Children are grouped according to the stage they have reached and not their age-it seems to work well.