Am I being unreasonable or is this a lot of extra work for a 6 year old?

[lifebook14]

Not really sure what to make of this so thought I would ask the wise people on here.

Teacher asked for a word today and said DS had been selected as a small group of children who needed some extra support with phonics/writing. Yes I agree he does and am happy for him to have some extra support.

However this support will be 3 extra 30 min lessons on Mon, Tue and Wed morning. So instead of starting school at 8.50 he will now have to get there at 8.10.

It just feels like a lot of extra work. He gets tired easily from school and an extra 30 mins on the day for 3 days a week seems an awful lot. Even if he did kumon or had a tutor it would only be for 1hour once a week. Also it's going to be really hard getting up earlier in the morning as he is not a morning person and likes to sleep in as long as possible. I'm dreading the thought of getting him up early for phonics on a cold, dark winters morn.

Apparently the lessons will go on until they feel the child doesn't need them anymore so potentially could be a term or all year!!

Don't get me wrong I am grateful for the help (although it feels a bit cynical that this is in the run up to SATS) but it just seems like such an extra burden on a young child.

Or is this normal and I'm just being PFB!?

It's the most effective method for identifying decoding/encoding difficulties which is why it's used

mrz but teaching is not the same as science. There are too many variables, in what is considered effective teaching, to allow it to be considered in the same way.

There may be no difficulties with understanding phonics, on the child's part. Phonics may just not have been taught effectively, or it may have been taught in a way, in which other difficulties (such as concentration issues) bars the child from learning effectively.

I'd just put him to bed earlier. My 6yo is at a school (not hers!) by 8.10 to drop her brother off. So IME it's ok for a 6yo to get to school then. If you are not happy, you could negotiate:

-alternative time during the school day
-them telling you what needs doing and you do as much as you can at home.

But you are lucky to get the intervention.

Such help in our school is also provided before school starts, it's normal. Would you prefer him to miss playtime?

Purple not 'lucky' to get intervention. The OPs child is as entitled to an education as any other child. Not lucky, to be in the situation where intervention is suggested. Not lucky, especially, if the wrong sort of intervention is being offered.

He is lucky - many children slip through the net and are never offered the help they need. Your attitude reeks of entitlement.

I have a 'dormouse' child. Your archetypal owl - chirpy at 10 pm but poor in the mornings. She also excels at an 'out of school' activity that increasingly happens later in the evenings so late nights are sometimes unavoidable.

Because I am a teacher, she has had to leave the house at 7.15 am, every day of the school week, for years, in order that I can teach other people's children as well as I possibly can. Including some early morning sessions for children who need a bopost, because I think it is vital that such children have the full school curriculum and don't miss out on 'community' parts of the day - assembly is where announcements are made, children get an opportunity to speak in pubic or share their work with the school - playtime or the 'other' subjects they often excel in such as PE, Art, DT or Science.

I already teach through assembly 4 days a week if I'm not taking it. My TA takes small groups in registration time, in assembly and, where unavoidable, in some other subject lessons. Some interventions, though, are MUCH more effective taken by a teacher, especially if it is the class teacher who can link the intervention continually to the class work. Or we have a couple of TAs who have specialised expertise - one in Maths, one in honics - which they employ throughout the school, and again i would leap at a chance to access that expertise before school.

So while I do appreciate that an early starrt in the name of getting a high quality intervention may seem like a pain, I am a little frustrated that something you absolutely EXPECT my own child to do - get up early so that I can teach your child as well as possible - is something you refuse to do for your own.

Mme so children with SENs and their parents should feel 'lucky' and 'grateful' to the teachers for what they get, education wise? Even if their needs had not actually been considered?

I am thankful and appreciate teacher's and other professionals work with my DC when they go the extra mile and show they really are and have got to know, understand and appreciate my DC. There are some very good educational professionals out there. However I'm not grateful for teachers merely doing their jobs, no more and no less, for which they are paid for.

Who mentioned SENs??

teacher I don't expect anything from you regarding how you care for your daughter. I would respect you equally for working part time or not at all. I would regard your choices as your choices. We all make them. I don't expect I was respected (I know wasn't) for not going back to work, when my DC was only offered part time (illegally) schooling, because of SEN...but I don't regret my choice.

Mme 'interventions' are carried out in order to cater for additional (special) educational needs. They are additional to the teaching a child would normally receive. Whether a child has any SNs is a different matter...

Caopsium,

The issue here is that it brings two areas of the child's needs into potential conflict.

On the one hand, we have the need for the child to feel part of the school community, by attending whokle scool events such as assembles, to receive a full and varied curriculum, including creative subjects, and to get their full quota of social time and exercise through playtimes.

On the other hand, we have the learning needs of the child, who may need additional help with phonics in order to be able to read well enough to continue to access the curriculum to the full and thus make the best possible educational progress for them.

Schools resolve this confluict in different ways. I have great sympathy with a school that says 'we refuse to take a child out of any part of the normal schol day, because they are entitled to receve a full curriculum and to enjoy playtime and community time, so we will provide interventions before school'. I also have sympathy with a school that says 'every single member of my staff is fully empklyed at every point in the school day already. However, i now have some Y1 children who failed the phonic check and therefore need to have that need addressed - we have to 'make' some time outside the school day for the best staff to be available to do that intervention really well'.

But don't know the intervention is the wrong sort of intervention. That's a bit of a leap based on the information given by the OP. It might be exactly the intervention he needs. It's just not at the time of day the OP wants it at. It's up to the OP whether she takes up the offer or not but it isn't wrong of the school to offer it at that time as most children will be fine with it. Whatever time they offer it there will be someone who complains.

Do agree that children are not 'lucky' to be offered intervention though. It should be standard for those that need it and should meet their specific issues.

As a teacher this makes me despair - no matter what we do we get complained about!

Actually Capsicum, the term 'special educational needs' has a legal definition, referring to children who have learning difficulties or disabilities that make it harder for them to learn than most children of the same age.

OP has not stated that her child has SEN just that he needs extra help (a boost as one of the teachers on here has described it) with reading and phonics.

I think where the OP is 'lucky' is not the offering of the intervention - it is offering the intervention so often, for such a long period, and at a time of day when it cannot be interrupted by other needs [many an assembly intervention has been interrupted by an unexpected crisis around behaviour or injury in the playtime immediately before it, for example, because where all staff do interventions in assembly time it is inevitable that if someone is needed to patch up a bleeding child it will interrupt the intervention offered by a member of staff]

teacher I am not criticising the intervention, just saying it might not be suitable for the OP's child, going on what she has posted. However I would still question how well the child's individual needs have been considered if there are issues with tiredness and tantrums, although OP might not have voiced her concerns regarding these issues yet, these sort of issues may have been spotted by now in the classroom. This highlights the need for dialogue between parents and schools, and joint commissioning of interventions with parents, rather than just a consultation with parents.

Rafa I questioned the validity of the intervention (not said it was definitely the wrong sort) and believe the OP needs to voice her concerns, open a dialogue, rather than refuse the intervention straight away.

Mme I know the legal definitions, have read the SEN CoP (the previous one and the new SEN CoP).

IsItFriday no you don't. In my 12:50 post I even gave the circumstances in which I am, and have been, very thankful and appreciative of teachers. I even buy gifts and volunteer...and have received gifts myself for the latter.

Capsium, if I were the teacher in this instance, the conversation I would be having would be around how the school and home could work together to make the earlier start more possible - beginning with the question of the child's current bedtime. A 6 year old going to bed at 7.30ish, who then needed to get up at c. 7.30 am to get to school for 8.10 is getting 12 hours of sleep, which is over the NHS guidelines for this age group of about 10 hours 45 minutes. If a child was still really tired on that type of bedtime / getting up time, we'd then be lookijng at what they were eating and when, general physical fitness, any after school activities that were going on too late, bedtime routines etc etc as it that 'holistic' view of the child - much under the control of the parent rather than of the school - that may help.

It is also worth considering whether the OP's child is particularly tired from school BECAUSE they have difficulty with phonics and therefore with reading. It is MUCH more tiring to be spending 5 hours a day in lessons that are hard to follow, where learning is a struggle, than it is in lessons where the child feels confident and doesn't struggle e.g. with each bit of reading they have to do. It may be that, once the phonics booster class has done its work, the child may be less tired rather than more?

Actually capsium teaching and learning are very much science, knowing how children develop, physically, emotionally and socially, how the brain develops and processes new information. how memory works, the most appropriate and effective methods. Teaching is an art and a science.

My dd has a statement and her physio programme was written into the statement which I suppose meant that the school could quite legitimately pulled her out of a class to do the programme 3 times a week to do the physio specified. The school felt that it would be better for dd to complete the programme before school with the physical literacy TA rather than with her own TA during the school day. I have to say that I was very appreciative even if dd is a night owl and even if it made mornings tricky as we needed to wait for ds's taxi to his specialist school.
To me it makes sense to do classes before the school day, missing assembly would have meant dd would have missed information given to the school as a whole, missing break or part of lunch hour would have meant she would have missed the opportunity to socialise and after school would have meant she would have missed the clubs offered and neither she nor I would have wanted her to miss lessons.
It was considered the norm in her school that interventions didn't mean that children missed lessons with their peers but instead got to school early and did them then. The parents there seemed to consider it the norm tbh and I'm not aware of anyone turning it down as siblings would be catered for in the library in fact the school was a hive of activity for up to an hour before the start of the school day.

capsium - that is just you, so please don't dictate my feelings!

teacher tiredness could be due to things other than bedtime, diet and fitness per se. Things outside of a parent's control, to some extent. There could be an issue with hyper-mobility and joint stability, for example, which can affect fine and gross motor skills and cause increased tiredness which in return can affect concentration.

I agree a child individual needs should be considered holistically.

mrz art and science? Not quite the same as pure science then?

IsItFriday the 'no you don't' was not a dictate on your feelings, it was in reply to you saying, that teachers get complained about no matter what you do (paraphrasing).