Son falling behind in core subjects. Do not understand.

[PasSerieux]

Hello all,

My son started foundation brilliantly. He did not cover phonics at nursery but very quickly caught up with kids in his class, then was fast tracked with a few other kids in literacy attending Y1 classes. His numeracy seemed to come along well too.
In year 1, he was still in the top set of kids. But he constantly complained about school, suffered some racist comments from peers (we don't play with people with brown skin type of stuff - which had also occured in foundation).

His teacher did not seem to care much for him - I once asked her an appointment because I was concerned. She told me that she could not possibly give me an appointment because that would be like having a parents evening, and anyway parents evening was coming up. Feedback during parents evening felt all negative. After the standard, 'yes he is fine', it was all ' he can not do this, or that'. This is all taking place in an 'Outstanding' school by OFSTED assessments. I saw my son's self confidence shrink in front of my eyes. He started to think he was not able to do maths for example. We had to tell him, that his teacher was doing 'martian maths' and we tried to do as much as possible at home to help. But it was hard.
We moved him to a private school in Year 2. Again school is meant to be excellent. Very good resources. It took him time to settle, and by the time he had, unfortunately his form teacher changed! He had to get used to a totally new personality and he did not get on well with the new teacher. All along, he fell behind in literacy and numeracy. He is now assessed as being among the botton 25% in terms of attainment (given the school he is at, I think that means below expected levels of attainment for his age).

I just cannot understand this. He is in year 3 now, and I thought he would have settled and caught up by now.

Literacy issues are:
He finds it difficult to puntuate. Still misses out capitals and full stops. Has a tendency to write a text and punctuate afterwards ( a habit, I found out he developed in Y1).
He still reverts letters, B and Ds and numbers 3, 5, 9s. Does not like joinging up. He was not taught this in y1, and when he joined the new school in year 2, kids had already done a lot of joined up writing.
Numeracy issues are:
huge lack of confidence.
His current teacher says that 'his processing speed' is slow. But that does not tally with his reading and understanding abilities according to her. this is a child who was told how a combustion engine works once an was able to draw a diagram of a combustion engine at the age of 5 (without being shown...).

I just do not understand. The teacher says it may be worth seeing an educational spychologist. I do not know what to think. I do not even know if practicing at home is doing him more harm (confidence, boredom, general dislike of the subject) than good.

Anyone with an experience of a child falling behind?

I am not a teacher, but I would not have thought that any of the things that you have mentioned are a huge cause for concern, in the overall scheme of things. However, as the teacher has mentioned an EP assessment, personally I would go ahead with this. This could tell you, for instance, if there is a reason for the reversal of letters (or at least suggest if further investigation is necessary). It could also tell you more about that processing speed; it is possible to have a very high IQ but slow processing speed. It may be a starting point and help you to see where any difficulties could lie.

At very least, it would put your mind at rest and help you to build the confidence your son needs.

I think you are right to be concerned, I think any parent in your position would be.

Firstly I agree go ahead with an EP assessment and any help or suggestions the school can make. I would get his eyesight checked (can't do any harm) and possibly look at dyslexia symptoms and see if any are familiar. The processing speed is a similar kind of thing to visual processing disorders, dyspraxia etc in that you can be extremely bright but somewhere along the neural pathways (or something like that, I am not a biologist) the messages become muddled and don't quite all meet up the way you would expect.

meanwhile I think you need to build his confidence. I would probably put a hold on extra practice of school work at home for the moment and try getting him to do a sport or cubs or something that will help him gain in confidence and discover some things he is good at. As his confidence increases it can only help his school work even if he has some problems and equally if you can find out what the problem is then that will help build his confidence.

The first thing is that children do not make steady progress, they plateau for a while and then surge ahead and leapfrog one another academically.
Reversing letters random capital letters and missing fullstops are ok at this age, he is only 7 after all!
If you have got a bright boy ,I think you should concentrate on whether the content of his written work is good- good ideas ,lively and intelligent, rather than letting him get stifled and bogged down in the technical aspects of punctuation too much.
One of my DS s was on the bottom table for everything at that age and ended up with A AA in maths chem and physics and is at a RG university now.My 3 brothers were the sme and didn't really 'come' to education until about 14 or so.I think it is very common with boys.If your DS is bright it will out eventually. The very real and present danger is putting them off education, in the meantime.
Don't fret- believe in him!

The racism and bullying he suffered could still be having lasting affects. When I was a child, I slowed in a similar way when I was 8 - went from straight As to failing in a matter of month - as I just couldn't cope anymore. It was like part of me shut down to survive. Even when I moved environments it still affected me and how I saw myself and thankfully my second school had a programme designed for helping with self esteem and talking through issues with others who had suffered similar. That group is still a cherished memory for me, it helped me a lot. If you can find safe space for him to be able to talk through and process and get a chance to see himself in a better light, it would likely help. Other non-school like environments can also be helpful if he has an interest in particular areas (my mother tried to put me in dance and gymnastics because those had been her interests, it did not go well...my kids enjoy more cooperative play and skills and enjoy Woodcraft Folks). It can get better, it did for me and my DS1 and DD1 (who both suffered bullying that broke their confidence that caused a lot of regression). What does your DS think of his progress and does he ask you for any help to improve?

An Education Psyc. may be able to give you a closer up look than a teacher with several other kids to look after can do and give you a better idea of what help if any he could need. It may be all is well and he's just plateaued for a bit, and the Ed.Psyc. will likely be able to spot that, but bullying can have very long lasting affects and many aren't obvious. Anything that can boost his self-image and confidence would likely help him either way.

I use several resources. For joined up handwriting, I recommend Joy of Handwriting, comes in PDF format so it can be printed or used as a copy from a screen, very short practice sheets that give very clear step by step instruction using a clock format that really helped mine. In the capital section it includes sentences. I printed the lowercase ones for the guides, then when they got to capitals I bought a exercise book and copied them in so they could work on using normal paper. Copywork could also be helpful, Currclick has loads you can just look up a topic he's interested in and have him copy a sentence or two to start with to build better habits.

BBC Bitesize does have KS1 and KS2 English section that he might find fun, as well as sections for Numeracy. There are quite a few online games that can help ease him back into it. If he prefers book work, CIMT has books with lots of puzzles and practice (they are also free from their website to print but I recommend the books, £3 each at primary (2 books make a year) and nice quality. There are free lesson plans to go with it that you can use to help if he gets stuck). I used them with DS1 when he was midway Y3, we started back from the beginning of the Y1 books and working our way through a few pages a day and his confidence in maths has really grown. He now enjoys maths again and feels good about it rather than panicking (I did the same for DD1, but she was still in Y1 so we just go slower, she's still quite nervous about it but she's getting there).

You have had plenty of useful advice, but I will just add a few bits more:

Literacy:

To help with writing sentences, see if you can buy some 'word cards' or make them yourselves if you can't find any. Include punctuation signs as well. Then give him a selection of the cards that will make up into a sentence, without telling him what that sentence is. (A bit like trying to make a jigsaw puzzle without knowing what the picture is.) If you like, to make it harder, include one or two extra words that ARE NOT part of the sentence.

Then see if you can make sentences that could be assembled in several different ways:

"this is a cat."

"is this a cat?"

so he can add the capital letters, full stop, and question mark as required. (Maybe you can think of some longer, more interesting sentences!)

"this is a sandy coloured cat, with a white tail; he is soaking wet because he has been shut out in the rain all day!"

I am always recommending the Oxford Phonics Spelling Dictionary, which I think he would find interesting and useful. It is under £7 from Amazon, and you can see sample pages from it HERE:

Numeracy:

This is information I always pass to people wanting help with maths, though some of it may be too easy for DS:

QUOTE:

Practical things are best for grasping number concepts - bricks, Lego, beads, counters, money, shapes, weights, measuring, cooking.

Do adding, taking away, multiplication (repeated addition), division (sharing), using REAL OBJECTS as just 'numbers' can be too abstract for some children.

Number Bonds of Ten forms the basis of much maths work, so try to learn them. Using Lego or something similar, use a LOT of bricks (of just TWO colours, if you have enough) lay them out so the pattern can be seen of one colour INCREASING while the other colour DECREASES. Lay them down, or build up like steps.

So:

ten of one colour none of other
nine of one colour one of other
eight of one colour two of other
seven of one colour three of other

etc, etc

then of course, the sides are equal at 5 and 5; after which the colours 'swap over' as to increasing/decreasing.

To learn TABLES, do them in groups that have a relationship, thus:

x2, x4, x8

x3, x6, x12

5 and 10 are easy

7 and 9 are rather harder.

Starting with TWO times TABLE, I always say: "Imagine the class is lining up in pairs; each child will have a partner, if there is an EVEN number in the class. If one child is left without a partner, then the number is ODD, because an odd one is left out."

Use Lego bricks again, lay them out in a column of 2 wide to learn 2x table. Go half way down the column, and move half the bricks up, so that now the column is 4 bricks wide. That gives the start of 4x table.

Then do similar things with 3x and 6x.

With 5x, try and count in 'fives', and notice the relationship with 'ten' - they will alternate, ending in 5 then 10.

It is important to try and UNDERSTAND the relationships between numbers, and not just learn them 'by rote'.

I am sorry it seems complicated trying to explain these concepts, but using Lego or counters should make understanding easier.

An inexpensive solar powered calculator (no battery to run out!) can help learn tables by 'repeated addition'. So: enter 2+2 and press = to give 4. KEEP PRESSING = and it should add on 2 each time, giving 2 times table.

There are good web sites, which can be fun to use :

www.ictgames.com/

www.resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/maths/index.html

UNQUOTE

Thank you all for reading and taking the time to respond. I truly appreciate. Sometimes I feel I have no-one to share with and your kind responses have been really helpful.

1- I think I will go ahead with the Educational Psychologist.
2- I also took a lot of comfort from your comments. I do have a tendency to worry.

3- I think the main challenge for me will be to to support my son without turning him off subjects: all the resources you identified will help, thanks again. But I shall take it slow and see how it goes.
4- I will also see his teacher after half term, perhaps give her a bit of the background and perhaps emphasise the confidence building aspects.

All the best.