Supporting an underachieving y4 boy ( no this isn't a joke but someone's life)

[TheSerene]

I rarely post but another thread has me so angry and sad.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/primary/1800201-My-childs-underachieving-in-year-4?pg=2

Im glad that this is hysterical for so many of you but as a mother of a y4 who has come out with level 2s I came here for support and how to help my son

The reality of having a child with additional needs who is struggling life can be hard and jokey threads / boasting this sort of thing does not help

Does anyone actually have help on how to support our ds who is late born in the year low attention span and restless and not really suited to the way school is set up, I feel he is set up to fail by the system. Apparently not bad enough to be statemented

I also have a part time job, other children, a husband who works long hours, no cleaner so realistic practical ideas welcomed

Thanks

DS's HT is very big on stories on CD. Says helps with attention (different type of listening to music?) and widens vocabulary. We have got some free from Sunday newspapers or you can borrow from the library. Famous Five going down well with DS age 8, also Mr Gum.

Take the cooking point above and let your DS help in the kitchen, it's all counting, weighing, quartering, timing etc.

Agree with idea try to find something outside school he's good at for confidence.

Thank you for everyone's time and support there are some really good ideas that I am going to explore further and work with my beautiful son.

It was hard parents evening and report to digest earlier I was quite emotional and defensive so need to also find coping strategies of me too !

Thank you everyone for your support x

Hi op.
I have been where you are and it can feel very lonely.
Check out the TH support thread.
Good luck x

Sorry I'm being really dim what's th support thread ?

Tinsley House support thread

OP I can sympathise. My ds is in year 4 and his class teacher lobbed ADD/ADHD at me in the last week of term. No mention of anything during the year and used to justify his poor maths and english exam results. I have asked the school to get him observed by the Senco and also to see an EP but all of this has to wait until next term. If any issues had been mentioned earlier I am sure they could have been tackled. I'm still at a loss as to why his class teacher didn't bother to contact me to express her concerns. Having said that in other areas at school he has absolutely flown so I'm hoping the EP assessment will work out what is going on with him.

I saw the other thread and refrained from posting on it. I assume it was meant to be a joke but was very poorly framed.

I've not had any experience of this from a parents point of view but I was one of the youngest in my year and have dyslexia and ADD but my primary school didnt feel i was bad enough to get extra support. I can remember what my mum did to help me.

When I was a kid Mum made sure to work learning into everyday life, like adding up how many steps we had to climb up on the way back from school, or how much the shopping would come to and getting me to read road signs and posters to her when we went shopping. she also used to make games out of practising maths with me so that I would pay a little more attention and would help me make up little poems to remember my spellings.

Mum used to use working out what we need for a teddy bears picnic as thats the sort of thing i was into but you could use cooking for a lot of the maths stuff, like measuring the ingredients then going if you've got Xg of butter and Xg of flour and Xg of sugar how much does your biscuit dough weigh?

Mum also used to make me work through the little work books you can buy over the school holidays, and occassionally she'd make her own worksheets for me if there was something i was really struggling with. She always made sure she had gold stars and if my brother and I got enough stars by the end of the holidays we'd have a special day out.

The biggest help with the reading and writing though was my favourite aunty used to write me letters with stories in and ask me to write back to her.

My report in year 4 said I was really behind in everything and that if things didn't improve they would have to keep me down a year, with all the extra work mum did with me I managed to catch up with the rest of my class, pass my 11 plus and do well in my GCSE's and I'm now studying for a degree. Mum says she thinks it wasn't actually that I couldn't learn stuff fairly easily, its just that my teacher was letting me get bored and drift off too often so i was missing bits.

I haven't got any big advice, but I have a year 4 DD, and to help her learn her times tables, we had a cd (Percy parker's times tables) that we could play in the car (constantly!) and just sing along to. I also bought her a big times tables poster which I put at the end of her bed, so when she woke in the morning she could recite a few of the times tables facts for whichever table she was learning that week.

Also, I don't know if your son has a tablet at all? Or a DS? just I found buying my daughter a tablet, and putting on educational games was a way of getting her to do things. You can download spelling apps and the like. Where my daughter resisted normal revising for spelling tests / homework etc, she would do it on the tablet because she saw it as fun iykwim! They also require minimal input from you too (I just had to put on her spellings onto the app each week) so it's something else you can do whilst out and about and it's not easy to sit down and help (dd has her tablet whilst she's sat waiting for her sister etc).

Who has told you he is "not bad enough for a statement"? Whilst this may be true, it may not - it isn't just about how well or not your DS is progressing with the curriculum but what other issues he may have. Have you thought about seeing your GP for referral to see if he has ADHD type problems etc? It may be worth exploring, if only to rule it out. I taught a boy who was finding it so, so difficult to learn because his brain kept "switching off" because of ADHD. Not, of course saying this is the same for your DS but it may be worth investigating?