No sense of where my child is in the class

[Enjoyingmycoffee1981]

I was very anxious about my August born son starting school this year. As it turns out, it has been fine. I am actually gob smacked at his progress. Before school, he knew how handful of letters, no sounds and blotchy counting.

Now he is reading!!!! Not everything obviously, not even close, but if he doesn't recognise the word by sight, he can sound it out and then gets it.

I would love to know how this compares with other children in his class. I want to know if he is doing well for a summer born, or if he is doing well. Period.

I have asked the teacher and she said, yes he is doing very well, but it is a large busy school and that was the sum total of our conversation.

So I would be keen on your thoughts.

He is 4.5, he recognises all letters of the alphabet, he can sound them all out, he can identify a number of words without needing to sound them out e.g. It, is, the, and, go, on, no etc. He can read most 3/4 letter words by sounding them out.

It is this doing ok, or is this just doing ok for a summer born?

Thanks v much

I'm also a teacher (I actually did some shirt term supply in the school my children attended and knew all the staff well socially) but they would never be so unprofessional as to discuss others regardless of my background. I would be shocked if they did.

Short not shirt!

Do you never do any intervention or small group work mrz? In my school children even in Reception are split for phonics and there are also various interventions and activities aimed at particular groups.

In Reception I think it's totally pointless trying to work out who is where in a class.

You will have children who don't know which way up a book should be.

You will have children who have taught themselves to read.

You will have children who have parents who have tried to make their child read.

You will have children who are perfectly capable of doing things but can't be bothered to even try and would rather play; and some who try but struggle.

It makes no difference to your child if little Johnny is reading Dickens or if little Rosie is refusing to read at all. It's about where they are for themselves.

You may have an exceptionally forward and bright cohort or a below average cohort or a very high percentage of children who don't speak English or come from homes where they have no stimulation. All of these can make a huge difference to where a child 'is in the class'.

FWIW, my summer-born DD knew all her phonic sounds and letters by the time they had finished teaching them, but refused to even attempt to read until the summer term. School just said that she was a very bright child and once she decided it was worthwhile she would learn to read very fast.

By the end of YR, she was on L1 books, she's now on L7 and goes off and reads on her own. Other children who I know started YR on L2, are now on L5. Some children are only getting to L3 now.

Teachers should be making an assessment of each child based on their characteristics. While the teachers weren't at all worried about DD being on L1 at the end of YR, there were other children on higher levels whose parents were being asked to come for a chat about remedial reading and phonics.

I would save the angst about where your child is in the class for higher up the school! It's a very natural thing to worry about, but at this age there is little point, just care about if your son is reaching the targets the teachers feel are appropriate for HIM.

Just to add - I totally, totally understand where you are coming from as I am naturally a tiger-mother type. I just got landed with a child who refuses to indulge me and the more I'd like her to do something the less likely she is to do it.

Given she's as stubborn and control freaky as I am it is probably a very good thing, but I've had to learn fast that all my carefully made plans to make sure she learns x,y and z and when and how are a waste of time and energy and that I need to just sit back and leave the professionals to it for now.

mrz how does that work for guided reading etc? Do they never do small group work differentiated by ability? My kids school have what seems like dozens of different groups for different activities, some ability based and some random, but they all seem to know exactly who is reading what (I don't, I hasten to add!).

Ds's teacher said that by the second term of reception the children tend to know very well where they rank against their class mates.

Her stance was that children are naturally competitive and that to pretend otherwise would be risky as if competitive behaviour is not channelled and modelled appropriately.

Tbh I found this attitude uncomfortable but having seen DS go through last term, I think it's true and made more difficult as in reception it totally depends on what they've already been taught etc.

We have never used guided reading, many schools don't.

No BMO we find splitting children for phonics counterproductive. Neither do we withdraw children from class to work with TAs no child is left behind.

Mrz, at what point do you think children and parents SHOULD be told about their attainment in comparative terms - either in relation to the class, or to national expectations/averages?

Do you think that at the end of KS1 is right? Would you be telling the children then if they were above or below the expected levels or not?
Would you tell them in KS2 or at the end of it?
If you don't tell them then, will the first sense they ever officially get of their ability relative to others be when they are set for maths in their secondary schools? It seems to me that is very late and not a nice way to find out.
Or would you have them wait until they get their GCSEs and discover if they have achieved the national average or not?

I get that the information isn't something that you want to keep giving out constantly. However it seems reasonable to me that parents could be told yearly something about absolute attainment (against a a national expectation/average) - clearly more useful than just against an individual class, although I would still find that useful. Of course they also need to know about individual progress.
Very small children don't need to know the specifics, but it is important to realise that they DO have a sense of a pecking order in terms of achievement. Of course their understanding of that is more likely to be wrong, if it surrounded in mystery and a banned, never to be spoken of topic.
I think that from Junior level children should be credited with being able to cope with understanding some basic information about national levels, especially as they are in Years 5 and 6. Parents should be told yearly.

And a final question - schools have all of this information - so why can't parents have it? Why should it be a secret from them or from the children who are of an age to understand it?

How do you think knowing your position in class helps you improve?

Mrz, as far as I can tell, absolutely no one on this thread has said that knowing the child's position actually helps the child improve.

Do you think that at the end of KS1 is right? Would you be telling the children then if they were above or below the expected levels or not?
Would you tell them in KS2 or at the end of it?

I happily tell parents if their child is working above/at/below expected levels at any point they wanted.

I don't really see the point in telling them where they are in the class though!

The two are different and I think only the first is useful.

Then what is the point in knowing if it isn't to support your child?

I'm "only" a TA, and mum to two summer borns - June and end of August.

I don't understand how you think knowing "where your child is" in the class helps anything. There will be low to high ability in any class. What matters is how they are progressing for themselves, not their "place" in the class . How do you "place" an average or low achieving child against natural achievers? What difference will it make to you to know your child is ,say,10th out of 20? Or 20th...when in fact he is making fantastic achievements for his ability?

My two Summer borns are/were always well ahead of their peers, so I don't hold much with the idea that it makes for difficulties, educationally. However, I do know that statistics say otherwise. Just not in my experience.

"I happily tell parents if their child is working above/at/below expected levels at any point they wanted."

Agreed this is useful information which allows the school and parent to support the child.

I agree that is more useful to know about your own child in relation to national expectations than an individual class. However, I maintain that if a class is particularly skewed in terms of ability (and realise most won't be) it can have an impact on the style of teaching a class receive and also about how a child feels about themselves (might feel they are doing poorly, when in fact they are not etc) and just having that information can help a parent support their child.

Finally, I think parents are entitled to ask for information that they will find useful. Someone else might not think that info will help parents support their child, but if the info is available and the parent wants to know, then why withold it? I don't like the sense of censorship of information and the suggestion that I am not capable of handling the information.

I still don't see how that would help

I can see that you can't see how it would help.
The point is that people would like to know the information. And they would like to feel they can ask the teacher for that information, without the only answer being 'you don't need to know that/knowing won't help you support you support your child'.
I will ask about whatever I would like to know. Many parents feel anxious about asking the school/teacher a question for fear that their question will effectively be be-littled.

If education is supposed to be a dialogue between home and school, people need to be able to ask the things they feel they need answers to and to be confident to do so.

Teachers have always told us at parents' evenings how DS is doing against average expectations.

DS tells us how he (thinks he) is doing compared with his classmates...now he's in Year 1 he has sussed out the book band colours, and certainly thinks he knows who is on which level (I'm not convinced he does!).

mrz - how do you organise phonics if there is a big spread within the class, say some children only beginning to recognise a few letters and hear some initial sounds, others confidently blending and segmenting with phase 3 sounds?

Chocolate surely you're entitled to ask, but you're not necessarily entitled to the answer?

If a child is happy, and making good progress, then I would not worry about the issues you mentioned.

If a child is unhappy, or not making good progress, then I would want to have a conversation with the school about why that might be and, more importantly, what we could both do about it.

Then what is the point in knowing if it isn't to support your child?

Its not for any teacher to decide this - or judge or try and work out why any parent would want to know.

We all take on pieces of information that are relevant to only us - and one shouldn't explain oneself as to why would want x y or z.

Its very possible - as our teacher did - without asking or prompting ....give out info on a specific area to give us a rough gage on something.

We didn't ask, or hint..and she didn't go into specifics either about any other children or who it was.

I find the idea that a teacher may want to withhold such information because that teacher doesn't see why the parent would want to know or how it could be any use to them, frightening.

Its non of their business and not their place. If a parent asks for a rough gage, you tell.

• ChocolateWombat Sun 18-Jan-15 18:16:48

Totally agree.

Perhaps because we don't split for phonics we don't create huge gaps.
It's quite easy to differentiate during whole class input, choice of words, gestures, visual clues, word length etc