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!?

yes capsium because that is why I spent 4 years training to be a teacher and 2 more to studt at masters level plus years of experience and continued professional development

I'm glad that you answered 'Yes,' to considering advice, mrz because as parent has spent more time with their individual DC than you.

No I don't work in education. I'm just using common sense. The OP recognises that the child needs help with reading & phonics, the school have proactively offered 1.5 hours a week of free support which avoids missing out on any of the educational and social aspects of the school day.

To turn this down just because it means getting up 30mins earlier is perverse.

And yes I'm supportive of teachers. Over the years some of my children's teachers have built better rapport with my children than others but actually, getting along with authority figures whether they are your type of person or not is a valuable life skill.

I'd bite their hand off. And change your attitude to reflect that this is important and he is lucky to be included. Not that it's a pain and you can't be arsed.

I do actively get on with teachers Mme, yes, even though they are 'authority' figures. They are not in authority, over me, though, our relationship is equal even though they might not consider it so.

Which is why the teacher spoke to the OP and why the final decision lies with the OP.
Teachers work with a whole range of professional and ask and give advice all the time which doesn't change the fact the school has identified that that OPs son needs support and have offered to provide that support in a way that doesn't impact on their other lessons.

This would have a far greater impact than anything they could do in class. It will quite possibly be teacher delivered rather than TA, won't mean that your child misses out either on the literacy that everyone else has, or their afternoon lessons. It's little different to offering an after school 'club', except that your child won't be tired already at the start of the day.

When I tutored, some parents preferred before school, and the children were fine with it - awake, alert and ready to learn. If this would require your child to get up earlier, my advice would be to do what those parents did - move bedtime forward a little, bath in evening etc so it only takes a few mins to pull on uniform and eat breakfast in the morning!

mrz it still remains to be seen as to whether them school have correctly identified the OP's child's needs, and whether this intervention is suitable, though.

OP stated that there was no previous communication concerning her DC struggling with reading or writing. If they had not identified his needs previously, the OP could be forgiven for being concerned over whether they have correctly identified them now. She is concerned about his tiredness and tantrums, which could easily impact on his education, if he had a longer school day. I strongly suspect the suggested intervention could be a knee jerk reaction to the results of Phonic Screening, his overall needs have not been discussed with the parent, as yet.

If this is the case the OP is not lucky, even if there is some value in the intervention. Her child's needs have been identified relatively late, which has resulted in a longer school day for the majority of the week, for the near future, in to catch up. If gaps in phonic knowledge had been identified sooner, they could have addressed before the child fell behind, the intervention may not have required so much time. Either that, or the process of investigating any underlying causal needs could be well underway...

Now if I was the OP and had voiced my concerns to the teacher and they went on about how professionally qualified they were, hinted that they thought I just did not want to get up early and how I was lucky to be offered this intervention for my child, I would not be impressed.

If they took my concerns seriously, could tell me why the difficulties had not been picked up and communicated to me sooner, reassured me they would be monitoring the impact of a longer school day on my child's concentration and behaviour, as well as offering flexibility regarding a graduated take up of sessions, I would be far more impressed.

I'm sure they are far better qualified to make those decision than you are capsium since you have never met the child. As people have pointed out it is highly likely that the offer is a result of the phonic screening check which takes place at the end of Y1 ... from those results the school would need to come up with a plan of action which they would then discuss with parents. As for identifying gaps earlier ... it's always better to wait until after you've taught something than to screen for something the child will be taught at some point in the future.

capsium,

The OP says "as we had not really been made aware of his problems until the very end of the summer term", so they knew of the issue before the summer holiday - I expect as a result of the child failing the phonics screening, even though the OP has not been back to clarify that.

I obviously agree that the problem could and should have been identified earlier, but now it has been, the school is proceeding in an entirely evidence-based way: they have the rsesults of the screening, possibly his work from last year, have sat down and discussed what to do about it and have come up with this proposal.

Of course, the OP can duiscuss it further, and of course the effect on the child should be monitored - both educationally and in terms of tiredness. However, the OP has not posted on here for a long time, and your points are MUCh more subtle and deeper than the OP's reasons for not wanting the intervention - which she stated to be her own and her son's difficulty in getting up in the morning, leading to a tired child after school.

If the school offered me 1.5 hrs a week in 3 x 30min sessions for my DD2 I'd bite their hand off. In fact, I nearly went in last week to ask for almost exactly that, but I thought I'd hold fire and see what they were going to offer first.

Also, this is a GROUP intervention. Graduated take-up may well not be practical or feasible - why should the other children selected for it have to wait for the OP's son to 'catch up' what they have covered in previous sessions, just because (to put it bluntly) the OP and her son aren't prepared to get up early, and they and their parents are?

mrz

As for identifying gaps earlier ... it's always better to wait until after you've taught something than to screen for something the child will be taught at some point in the future

Indeed. However I would have hoped he would have been taught something, many things, before the point of screening. Assessments should have been made regularly, at least from Reception age, the DC's progress communicated and teaching tailored.

I never said I was better qualified to make decisions concerning this child, I merely said OP would be right to voice her concerns and that I sympathised with them. I even recommended trying the intervention. I think, perhaps, you are adding a meaning to my posts that is not intended.

teacher but the OP is right to be concerned, as communication has been lacking. Added to this tiredness and tantrums could, potentially seriously, impact her DC's education.

teacher depends how much whole group activity is involved. Within a small group the teacher could be working with each in turn, whilst others did some short independent reading / writing activities. The OP has not said what exactly the intervention is.

OP - I'd also like to add that you're lucky to be being offered this at all. Friends of ours ended up paying for a tutor twice a week in Year 1 to help their child catch up. School had told them their DC was very behind, needed Ed Psych intervention and would never catch up. DC simply had a poor visual memory and needed things presenting to them in a different way. Friend's DC passed the phonics check at the end of Y1, and is now on an average book band for age etc, but it cost the parents £££ and they'd have loved to have had the chance to let school do it for free!

Assessment is continual but also summative assessment is used at the end of periods of study to see how well pupils can apply/understand/retain what they have been taught. Both types are useful and vital to provide a full picture.
The reason screening is important is that it highlights issues that may not be evident in day to day interactions

Capsium,. the results of the Phonics screening were available at the end of the summer term. The OP became aware of them at the end of the summer term - so in an entirely timely manner. 2 weeks into the new term, a very substantial intervention is proposed. Tbh I thin the school is acting both quickly and decisively. I suspect what has happened is that the OP's child may well have had some 'in cl;ass' differentiated help ibn the run up to the screening - perhaps in a slightly differently targeted phonics group from the rest of the class, deopeninding on how phonics teaching is organised in the school - but having failed the screening, that is now being stepped up.

I do agree that the fact that the OP's son was finding phonics rtricky could usefgully have been rauised throughout Y1. however, the use of 'really' in the OP's early post is possibly significant - she may well have been somewhat aware, but perhaps not realised how far behind the expected level her child was until they failed the screening. I have had the same experience - I have read out my parents' evening notes to a parent, saying, for example 'X always works hard in Maths, but at the moment is a little behind where we would expect a child to be at this point in the year', only to be accused, when ringing a parent up about an intervention to accelerate their child's progress 'you never said anything about being behind'. UIrt seems thart creating an intervention makes it 'real' for parents in the way that feedback at a parents' evening doesn't to the same extent.

bronya in the example you give I would question whether the school would have been able, they obviously had not identified the DC's needs correctly or catered for them. This is the sort of experience that makes me question schools' expertise. (Although I do mean question, not dismiss entirely.)

Mrz - X post but you raise a very sensible extra point. It is quite possible that in day-to-day phonics lessons, the OP's son may have appeared to perform adequately. Only the summative assessment to see how much has been retained, and how much can be applied in a new context, may have revealed the problem to the full.

teacher well we just don't know how much has been communicated, apart from what OP has said. Her concerns are still valid though, I do sympathise. I do not blame her for being concerned about the serious impact that tiredness and tantrums could have on her DC's education. If her DC is prone to them, this is probably quite worrying for her.

Hi and thank you for all your opinions and to capsium for your understanding.

Just to clear up a few points:

Firstly this is definitely not about me not being arsed to get up in the morning. I have a younger child who is an early waker so I am up by 6.30 every day whether I like it or not.

It is also not about the practicality of getting my DS up but rather the fact that he is a child who struggles to wake early and gets very tired with a normal school day. Therefore my concern is that getting up earlier and doing an extra 30 mins work each day will give him a very inauspicious start to his day and lead to him suffering later on in the day and maybe loosing concentration in other subjects.

I can assure you there are no issues with what he eats, bedtime routine etc. We have a healthy diet and lots of fresh air and exercise. He is simply someone who needs a lot of sleep and has been since he was a baby. It's very hard to get him to sleep earlier. We have tried this before in the past and he will just lie there awake until his normal sleep time.

He did fail the phonics test but I would have thought that if there were issues the school would have picked them up and relayed them to me earlier. We had a parents evening in April where I was told all was fine. If they had said something to me there of their concerns I could have maybe done a more gentle intervention with him myself so really I don't feel particularly lucky to get to this stage.

We will try the 3 mornings but I don't feel it would be unreasonable to ask the school if he can do 2 out of 3. They have not told us what they will be learning but I assume it will be refreshing and consolidating what they already know rather than learning new things so I don't think it would be a case of the others waiting for him to catch up. Surely there must be working parents and parents who maybe have to get other siblings to different schools who would find this hard too?

lifebook no worries. I hope everything is resolved soon and the extra sessions do not turn out to be too onerous.

If he failed the phonics test it means that he hasn't got a secure grasp of the phonics that he should have known by June of year 1. It's as simple as that. It means he can't use that knowledge to make sensible attempts at spellings, he may not be able to read instructions from the interactive white board. He will struggle to demonstrate his abilities, even if he is able, because he can't get his knowledge on paper to be assessed.

Try it. Be positive about it. If he really falls apart with tiredness, speak to his teacher.

Great to see you back, OP! What time does he get to bed? I found moving bedtime back by 5 minutes at a time was more successful than in bigger chunks - so get to the half hour earlier over a week, rather than all at once.