What on earth do people expect from reception?!

[Puttheheatingon]

I was very early on the playground with dd2 this morning and got talking to another reception mum. It's worth stating that I'm a little more 'experienced' as dd1 is in Y3 and I'm sure I was similarly pfb when she started.

Anyway, this mum was clearly extremely unhappy with what her dd is doing at school, in that apparently she "isn't doing anything". I didn't figure out if that was because the dc was doing the whole denial of any activity thing my dd1 still does, or if she was genuinely expecting her dd to be free reading after a month of school.

My DD2 has gone from being able to only write her name in a fashion to starting to form many more letters legibly, has started to read, is adding up numbers on her fingers, learning about new friendships while insisting she does nothing all day .

The mum reckoned that lunch is too long and they are having too many breaks.

How sad . I'm sure even in pfb overkill I was never like this. She's bonkers, right?

DS finished YR & started Y1 recently. I have been AMAZED at the transformation. Granted on day 3 he was lamenting the loss of so much play time but he's flourished. It's the age old thing of him being ready. I firmly now believe YR is essential for all those things mentioned up thread such as getting used to school & making friends.

Hersetta -- did your son really think "drum" starts with a "d"? I would have thought the "dr" sounds more like a "j" to most children!
I remember one child in reception being asked to think of a word starting with "ch" and he confidently said "tree!"

(I know I'm off topic... I agree with all the posts re the importance of play!)

Some children do think drum begins with /d/ but most children in FS do think of it as a /dr/ sound, similarly with train beginning with /ch/. It is developmentally normal to do so but not 'abnormal' for children to bypass this stage. By Y2 I would expect most (excluding SEN with S&L issues) to have grasped it. In Reception, it is perfectly normal and acceptable but still corrected!

My nearly 4 year old is learning his 'Jolly Phonics' in Nursery. Though he is doing remarkably well (knows all GPCs in phase 2 of Letters and Sounds) he still thinks train begins with /ch/. I just tell him it begins with /t/ and emphasise the /t/ at the beginning - separating the /t/ and /r/ so it is more obvious, or at least try it!

As for YR, if a parent is unhappy because her child isn't reading and writing novels and calculating TU x TU, then the onus is on the school to ensure parents know what is expected from YR and what they will be taught.

Some parents don't have a clue and understandably so.

Completely off topic though, I remember my own 'YR' days (1st year Infants then!) and there were 3 classes - Autumn, Spring and Summer. Summer borns were in a classroom double the size of the others and had 'proper' toys. The Autumn and Spring classes had a home corner and a few boxes of lego, stickle bricks etc, etc. Play wasn't a top priority in 1983! I remember lots of workbook lessons and smacks from the CT for breaking a plastic spoon in the home corner and a friend getting one and crying on the carpet for sitting on her blue pen and can't forget me being put under the table she sat on for story, pulling faces at my friends. Oh how that was a massive faux pas on her teaching capabilities!
I also did a TT practice in 1998 and my class were early admissions YR. They played A LOT but the other two classes didn't play as much. Lots of table work for them. And that was only 17 years ago - so understandably I can see why some parents think play shouldn't happen if they ave no experience or dealings with schools between themselves attending and then their own children going.

I think bright children learn through play but also can be taught to read and write more formally if they are ready. Even in YR children have wide variations in prior attainment so they need differential teaching. Some children will not have a good vocabulary or be ready to do any sitting down lessons. My YR experience for my DC was a happy mixture and brilliant communication from the school about what to expect. Some parents do seem to think that a child with limited vocabulary and poor motor skills will be reading and writing immediately They start school.

Lurking as someone who taught Jolly Phonics for over twenty years I always found it a flaw in the programme that some of the actions/pictures confused children. Many thought /r/ for dog (action puppy shaking rag and saying rrrrrr) /ch/ for train (child moves arms like train saying ch) /n/ is for plane (arms out saying nnnnn -noisy aeroplane) and so on ... Programmes that don't have the same visual prompts don't have these sound confusions.

Ive never had a child think drum has a /j/ sound at the beginning and it's a simple matter to explain that dr isn't one sound and help the child to identify the two sounds.

Best advice we got before YR was that children who know some phonics Will likely complain they have to sit on the carpet and 'do phonics ALL the time' - teacher explained that this will be max 10 minutes a day once it's clear what they know, and it ensures they haven't missed learning some letter-combos. And 10 min a day won't kill them.
Sure enough, a bit of whingeing ensued but not much.

My Reception daughter is October born, and has been reading since she was 3 (nothing to do with us, she just loves books). She knows all her phonics sounds and letters of course. She was desperate to have a proper reading book home and has only just got one, which she is thrilled with. I would feel as though I was letting her down if I didn't ask the teacher to give her something else to do while the class are learning their letters (spurred by her coming home saying she knew it and wished she could be doing something a bit harder). I think if a child is capable then it is fine to give them 'work' within their limits, alongside all the play-based learning, which is very important as well.