Bad parent?

[Lalakels]

So I have parents evening in the morning (don't ask) and until now (DD is in yr 2, KS1) I have met these with a sense of defeat. I have definitely failed her by not realising that the spellings sent home for weekly testing were not being taught in school and since I realised and Thursday evenings are dedicated to them she is flying each week and forgetting by end of term. With times tables, communication was poor on which were being tested so I attempted to teach them all and scared all the confidence out of her. This week was the first week I was clear on the ones being tested and she got 5 out of 8 (so proud). My aunt sees my parental guilt consuming me and as a teaching assistant tells me yr 2 is slightly early. My mum reminds me that I never ever had homework at this age (and I am luckily literate and quite good with maths etc). The teacher however inadvertently makes me feel like DD's position in bottom groups is down to my failure to juggle two kids, a business, a full time career and DD's moods after a long day at school. I suggested tutoring, she said yes. Sorry for the back story but my question is this... (These) if times tables in year two are killing confidence, is this the right time? If I have always read and talked maths in everyday life to my kids, how much should the school be teaching versus me? Do many schools offer out of hours sessions for kids that are struggling? ( My local one does, the one I chose for being supposedly better, doesn't.) Should I feel as bad as I do, or challenge it?

Although it is early I think perhaps it would be a good time to get into the routine of supporting homework being part of family life.

How do her tables and spellings come home? Are they on lists in a little book?

Could you buy a white board for the kitchen wall and build in a routine that on the day the homework is given DD writes the spellings and tables for the week up on the whiteboard? Then you could glance at it each day over breakfast or dinner. You could rub letters/ numbers off for her to fill in, rub whole ones off and ask her to work out what is missing or ask her to rub them off and mix them up. If you get a magnetic whiteboard and a set of letters/ numbers she could make certain words/ sums out of the letters each day. All easy to do/ supervise.

She only needs to know 2 5 and 10 by the end of the year so forget about the others for the moment and get those really really secure. The school should have taught her what x tables mean and done some work on them but there just isn't enough time in the day to go over and over and over them till every child has instant recall of all the facts in any order. Some will get it very quickly while others will need a lot more repetition. That's where home comes in I'm afraid. Make it visual - draw or make arrays for each fact so she has a picture in her head for each one. On phone and need to go to work so can't give more details but Google will show you what I mean!

No way should the teacher be making you feel like a bad parent!

And no way are you a bad parent!

They are learning spellings and times tables in class. No way are they not.

So either :

1. The teacher isn't very good - which is why she is guilt tripping you

Or

1. Your DD has difficultly learning spellings and times tables - in which case extra time with you may or may not help. Depends what the problem is.

As you've noticed leaning spellings for a test doesn't help much.

I very much suspect the teacher is struggling and that is why she is being so unprofessional to you.

Schools always blame parents if children aren't doing well. But 9 times out if 10 if the child has a problem learning in class they'll also have a problem learning at home.

I have heard so many teachers blame parents. Very lazy thought process that leads to the blame.

Quite often, spellings will be "introduced" at school but not extensively taught. It is one if those things that is best done 1:1 through parental involvement. It is much the same with spellings. Both of these are very much down to the individual, which it went they are normally learned at home. (KS1 teacher of 8 years).

I agree with tiggy it doesn't sound like the teacher's blaming her.

For what it's worth, OP, I don't, and never have done the spellings (or tables) with my yr3 ds. He hates his homework and it's as much as I think is good for him to do the rest of the stuff he's given. If I got him to learn the spellings it would do no more than make him even more resentful about the time spent. And the teacher knows this and is happy with this.
Luckily for him, he's good at maths, so learning tables has never been an issue-also he heard his sisters learning them, so know quite a bit from that.
And I think it's been shown that learning spellings for a test has no relationship upon whether a child can spell it for real.
I know I used to get 10/10 most weeks on spelling tests as dm really made sure I learnt them. I'm still such a bad speller I consider it a triumph to get it close enough for spellcheck to recognise it.

So OP, if you want to help her, I'd see if you can find something more fun for her to do. We used to play games in the car where you build up the sentence, taking it in turns:
So you'd go:
Dog.
A brown dog.
A brown spotty dog.
A brown spotty dog runs.
A brown spotty dog runs fast.
Suprisingly a brown spotty dog runs fast.
etc.
Ending up with something like:
Surprisingly a brown spotty dog, who ate all my delicious breakfast this morning, runs on its three legs very very fast towards my dinner, which I don't want it to eat today.

And you get them to think about that when they're writing.

Let's get to the heart of the problem here, OP.

Your dd is struggling. Forgetting to do the times tables or spellings will not put her on the bottom table. SO...you have a few choices:

1. If she is happy enough and confident, and doesn't hate school, leave it be and let her be there and maybe she will catch up and maybe she won't, but it will be ok if it's not too important to you.

1. Get a tutor, hammer the times tables, hammer the spellings...she will probably improve, a bit. But it's gonna cost you (time, money, effort). Is it worth it? (In my opinion, not really).

1. Find out if something is wrong. This is a long haul, but it's better to find a problem than temporarily fix it. So, she is Y2...my ds1 was bottom table in Y2. We are now finding out all sorts of stuff...he had problems focussing, he as working memory issues. BUT he has improved a lot. He's never going to be Mr Academic. I hear you with the times tables and spellings, forgotten within a week! He has other strengths and as long as he is happy at school, and it doesn't undermine his confidence too much, I'm happy.

Having said that, we do do homework, but only a couple of nights a week. Repetition is vital for those kids who tend to forget, so just keep repeating, especially high frequency words so that they come easily in the middle of writing (you can get the top 300 online). We set aside around 30mins on Sat morning to do the set homework and the rest fits in when we can.

DD is in Y3, and I can confidently state that the bottom table kids last year were not touching on more than counting in 2s, 5s and 10s at this stage of the year (without the 2x2 bit, just counting on and skipping the appropriate amount of intervening numbers). I know because I helped with maths at school. It is a school that performs a bit better than averagely well in terms of results. Is the school your DD is at a very high-achieving school in general? If so, maybe you need to ask how she is doing against age-related expectations rather than what group she is in.

You are not a bad parent but it sounds like communication re expectations of the school hasn't been great. Do they do a half-termly curriculum sheet or anything? We get one of these and it is really helpful in terms of being up to date with what they are doing.

Also, quite honestly, times tables and spellings are quite low down what I would be prioritising as a parent of a child this age, particularly if she was struggling a bit. Can you book an appointment to get proper information on what your daughter is struggling with other than these?

And I never had any homework at this age either and didn't know my times tables reliably until I left school at 18 (and I have been fine, academically).

This is my standard advice for numeracy and tables:

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, 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,

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'.

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.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/page/default.asp?title=Woodlands%20Junior%20School&pid=1