Meassuring Ability

[pateran]

Hi I am looking for some advice on meassuring the level your child is at for Maths and English.

We are in Scotland so do not sit exams and we use CFE (curriculum for excellence) which is all about working to your own level and doesn't really measure this.

The reason is that my DS who is 7 and 3 months in primary 3 has always done well at school. Naturally academic and at times it has caused issues with boredom at the school because he is not challenged enough lately he has slipped and I feel he is getting lazy. As there is no push to move in the class - as he is still acheiving well compared to his peers. I just worry that if he lets it slip now he will become lazy in the future.

I'd like to be able to gauge his reading/English ability of age and the same for maths.

I was hoping someone might be able to give me advice on how to do this.

I appreciate that these things aren't set in stone and some people would not be interested in knowing.

Thanks in advance

Why not go into the school and ask to see his current work (rather than the work at the last parents' evening.) If his current schoolwork is perfect and too easy then you might have a point. But is it?...

Not sure about maths I'm afraid but I did the Burt Reading Test with DD which I found useful as a general guide to her reading age and ability. Not sure if that would help you at all? I just googled it and you can download the test with instructions.

The Burt reading test only tests decoding and not comprehension although that in itself is useful.

How different is the Scottish curriculum to the English one?

We were lucky to have a friend who runs a tutoring franchise, and she offered to assess our ds for free. She told us the levels he was working at, but the school should know and they should be stretching him if he's working at above his academic year.

Thanks everyone for your time and comments.
columngollum his work is very good his reading at home is far higher than the books he does at school. His writing has been commented on as being about 3 years above his age always neat and spelling is very good. He can construct very complex, for his age, sentences. His work when we see it as there has not been fairly easy for him. There is a parents night next month and I want to be able to figure out his levels before they tell me.

The Scottish system has no testing and TBH the teacher will only every tell you that they are working at the level for their age. They wil say his reading is good but not much more than that. I'm looking to know he is the best at it but I wonder if they realise he is able to do more. The bases on the CFE as I understand it is that the teacher has to develop each child individually at their level - I knwo it is impossible BUT curently they are all working at a group level and he is not pushed at all. He has become lazy - sums used to be in his head this week he was doing adding hundreds and tens back and forth - something he could do in his sleep he was being lazy about - juts giving any old answer until I would get frustrated and say you know that's wrong and he'd get it in a second. I feel he is getting lazy because he has been doing this stuff for so long.

I feel the school focus in general is wrong - teaching seems second to how well he sits - daily he has not sat straight enough in his seat and been in trouble for it. It will be interesting to see how well she sits at the parents night.

I will try the Burt Reading Test. I migth try somem sample paper from the English age 7 exams and see if that gives me an idea of if he can acheive do these.

In general your second posting reflects the views that parents who send their children to private school (or school them at home) hold, ie that nothing the school does or is able to conceive is good enough for your very intelligent and able child (therefore he would be better off being educated somewhere else.)

When the teacher says that your child is working within the levels he is expected to work in the teacher is not necessarily wrong. Do you know what levels the teacher is talking about? My child reads a school scheme which has always been too easy for her. (And has only recently been moved up to the level for children exceeding their expectations.) The new books are still far too easy, but reflect what I've seen other children at other schools exceeding expectations being given.

That is to say that there is absolutely nothing surprising about the standards set nationally for exceeding children being below parents' expectations.

The trick is how to deal with it. So far it's my observation that individual teachers are far better at grasping the problem than others are. And my advice would be locate the teachers who can understand the problem and find work-arounds for the teachers who can't.

(I don't think you are doing what I am about to write, but:- Going on about the problem inside the school in the face of teachers who don't understand the problem just makes the problem worse.)

Ds's school are brilliant (as brilliant as they can be with the class ratios) at differentiating for more able children. The more I talk to people or read on here, the more I appreciate his teachers and school.
But, it shows it can be done.
A friend moved her able child from another local primary to ds's school and can't believe the difference.

Thanks again columngollum I hear what your saying and hadn't really thought of the teacher not understanding how to deal with it, but it makes some sense. We had an issue last year when his teacher was always giving him into trouble for what I deed petty stuff, not sitting straight, spilling his pencil case - not putting his shoes on quick enough. While at the same time complaining that his effort has dropped and he has stopped completing work. I tried everything then met a family friend who works in the government advising and inspecting schools and designed the CFE. I told her I was thinking of taking him to a GP because I thought there was a behavioural issue with him. She has met him lots and spoke to him lots and right away said he's bored that's the issue. It lead to a coversation with the teacher at which time I told her what I'd been told - she said oh!! Then I will try to push him more show his work etc - the rest of the year no issues.

I agree on how I sound and no I'm not paying for private education but that doesn't mean I'm going to sit back and let this happen. If he was under acheiving he'd get extra work to help him keep up. His school has a very large assisted learning department - all those kids get extra help to keep up. It seems unfair to me.

With regard to within the standards of his age - I am aware and the bracket and it is huge and goes from primary 1-4.

He does read extra out of school at higher levels but I don't know what work to assign him to help challenge him.

I have thought about moving him schools but my DH is very reluctant incase this isn't a school issue. There is a total lack of communication at his school and it has caused issues for us as working parents on several occassions. Things like there is an assembly you need to attend on Friday - letter comes out on Monday and not just once.

I think I will try to test that was talked about to find out his levels and then keep doing work at home. I think I will approach this with the teachers in a different way and get them to help me give him extra work hopefully they will be able to help with where I would get resources and take it from there.

Thanks again

My own view is that it's far better to have a personal view of what you want your child to achieve in say English and maths and then get them there than it is to ask teachers. One reason is because every teacher's opinion is likely to be different and another is because a teacher is quite likely to want to know what your son's results are before she'll comment (which is quite reasonable in a way.)

With a personal view of what you want to achieve you don't need any input from teachers at all. You just decide what the goals are and head straight for them. If your son is already reading way beyond his school reading material , then for reading at least, you've already done just that.

The same is just as easily possible for maths and writing. Primary school educational materials are readily available in WH Smiths for example, or in your public library.

Where this co-education (as it's sometimes known) can come crashing down is when you explain to his current teacher that there's no need to do times tables with your son because he's currently researching vectors for the local science club and he has just finished summarising friction coefficients for the local highway department. You're likely to get blank stares as she tries to shove "Peter & Jane Count to Fifty" in his hand and then complain that he hasn't finished page eleven yet. Because that's all she knows. (The teacher doesn't know what friction coefficients are.)

The best thing to teach you son is how to fill in Peter and Jane Count to Fifty really quickly and then continue working out his friction coefficients in his private notebook.

That way everybody is happy.
The teacher gets her simple sums done.
The boy isn't bored.
Mum is pleased because the local highway patrol got its physics done by a ten tear old.

That's why I asked how different the English curriculum is to the Scottish one. I think you will only know by getting him to sit SATS papers (which you can then mark yourself) to have any idea.

My DD is currently in yr1 and very strong academically in literacy and reading. Something has "clicked" in numeracy lately as she is now doing very well.

She has an amazing teacher who really pushes her and will not let her get away with doing the bare minimum. She has extension work which she is expected to dive straight into when she has finished the class work.

That said, not everything is perfect (reading books) but our policy now is to ignore school books and do our own thing

I think there is always the risk that bright DC's will happily coast along doing fairly well at the top of the class with little effort. I think sooner or later not putting in the effort will cause a problem.
DS1 can be a bit like this, it can be hard to motivate him when he is used to finding most things easy. One tack I am trying is getting him to do so something he enjoys but has to work at so he is learning violin. He gets furious and frustrated with it sometimes because he expects and wants to be able to play something perfectly the first time. He thinks practice means playing something once and it's done. I think his fury and frustration with it are healthy and I hope it's teaching him that actually if he wants to achieve he has to put some effort in and that the effort will be worthwhile eg he was delighted at Christmas because he could screech out a couple of Carols when the family visited.

Not putting in "the effort" when the work is too easy is the only option available.

There is no effort to be put in.

So, the slacker in such a case is the teacher, not the child.

(I'm not sure I agree that getting angry with an instrument is good.)

He's not exact angry with the instrument just frustrated and cross with himself because he can't do it perfectly at the first attempt, which is his expectation of everything he does. He expects things to be easy, likes things to be easy. It's good for him that playing the violin isn't instantly easy. He does enjoy it when he can do it so he gets an achievement from his effort. We had the same thing when he wanted to learn to tie his shoelaces, he wanted to do it but couldn't do it the first time he was shown. He sat their with his trainers raging, crying and furying over them but was absolutely determined he was going to do it and wouldn't be helped by anyone. About an hour of fury later he managed to do it. I'm saying it's good and healthy for bright children to have challenges. Over time he is going to have to deal with and control the feeling he gets when he is challenged by an activity, now we get very emotional outbursts.

Thanks again everyone. I have given a lot of thought to the comments made and I had never really thought about the teacher not having a clue what she should do. I think I am going to speak to my Ds and explain that he can take a book to school that he can read etc once he has completed his school work. He is daft on F1 at the moment and will read anything he can on this topic so I feel this will spurt him along to make an effort.

I completed the Burts reading test and he is coming in at age 10 for reading ability at 7yrs 4months. The reading book he is one is way below this so we will need to encourage him at home to do more work to keep him moving forward before laziness takes over.

I feel that he doesn't put the effort in because the work is so easy for him so he just does it slowly. It has caused problems last year at this time he was not completing work and he got into lots of trouble for this, being kept in at break time to complete this.

I would prefer him to be challenged that is my issue because he does get annoyed when he can't get anything right first time it totally knocks his confidence.

I really find it annoying as I feel he is missing out at school because there would be more support for someone struggling than there is for someone who can do the work easily. It's very frustrating.

Thanks again

OP, how do you feel about this thread being turned into more of an open topic about able children in school? Since you've said several times that you now have the info that you need.

People often say not only are more able children in a "special needs" category of their own (which of course they are, in a way) but that teachers have a duty to cater for children both at the top and at the bottom end of the ability range.

I've kind of got a bit of sympathy for this view (but not a lot) and here's why. When you send the child into YX you already know that the children there are doing the curriculum for year x. So you already know that the teacher is going to be geared up for teaching that type of lesson. It's also common knowledge that some teachers are good at differentiating for slow learners, some for fast learners and some aren't good at differentiating full stop.

So, let's suppose that you're an aircraft engineer and for some reason (best known to yourself) you've decided to teach your six year old son flight dynamics particularly those pertaining to wind tunnels. And, let's say that both he and his four year old brother are now specialists in equations featuring continuity, velocity and density.

Now, you've noticed that neither son one in Y2 and son two in reception are particularly interested in their numeracy lessons.

Whose problem is that?