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Original poster

Something not quite right here. How do I handle this?

72 replies

PastConditional · 07/10/2015 15:03

Dd has just started yr 5. She was doing very well last term and her teacher assessment put her at 5C for reading, which is a way ahead of where she needs to be at the end of year 4, so I thought all was well.

However, this term she mentioned that she was in a lower group for reading and being given easier work which she was finding frustrating. I didn't think too much of it until yesterday when she brought her spellings home to learn. The first two were "dog" and "dogs", and the hardest one on there was "trolleys". She said she asked the teacher if she could take the more difficult list that another table had been given as she knew all those words already, but he said "no, they'll get harder as the term goes on".

She is understandably feeling quite humiliated and I am just bewildered.

Has anyone experienced anything like this in primary school, or got any ideas on the best approach to take with the teacher?

Tia

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Original poster
PastConditional · 07/10/2015 20:33

Her spelling is pretty good if you ask her to spell something out, and she has generally got full marks in set spelling tests up to now, but it's pretty sloppy and inconsistent in her writing (she has some issues with presentation and organisation generally). So there is an issue there, but I can't see that putting her back to this level is going to do anything to help with that.

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Original poster
PastConditional · 07/10/2015 20:35

Between, thanks. He did say that she could be in the top group, but that there wasn't space. And that it was a boost for the other children in her group to have her there (not sure what to make of this)

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Alibabsandthe40Musketeers · 07/10/2015 20:52

Seriously?

I would be on the phone to the head first thing in the morning, if I were in your position.

How can there not be space? If they have bright kids then they need stretching.

LittleFishBigOcean · 07/10/2015 21:01

alibaba I don't think I've suggested I was dismissive. At the end of the day I'm assessing what the child shows me they can do not what the parent says they can do. There's no aggression or dismissiveness in this. I know that I'm going to be asked for evidence for my judgement and I'm not going to get that from what someone else essays they can do. My point here was to give the teacher the chance to gather that evidence to show what the OP's DD can do.

Also, I suggested the OP bring it up at parents's evening where the books would be there as black and white evidence. Getting spellings right in a test is only part of learning them. Applying them in written work is vital too and if the OP can see that in her DD's work then she's in a far stronger position to say she's getting unsuitable work.

And no, I haven't received assessment information. Previous Teachers have told me whether children are at the higher or lower end of your group expectations, broadly speaking but I don't have 'data'.

This is the first time I've commented on a thread and admitted that I'm a teacher.

It may will be the last.

LittleFishBigOcean · 07/10/2015 21:03

Auto correct fail with s and apostrophe.

Shoot me now.

BetweenTwoLungs · 07/10/2015 21:03

There wasn't space?!?!?! Make space!!! That's rediculous, children do not fit into handy groups according to how many sit on a table. I sit the children fairly mixed ability in English but if I were to go for ability setting, if I had 7 children working at the highest level I would have a 4 and a 3 or something. That's a very silly comment for him to make.

Original poster
PastConditional · 07/10/2015 21:23

I don't think we can wait until parents' evening - that's a third of the academic year gone.

To add insult to injury, when they're at their home tables she has one of the kids from the top set regularly asking her how to spell words like "disappear" which to here are very easy.

The other half of my concern is that if there is such a big discrepancy between what she has previously shown she can do and the way she is presenting now to a new teacher, there might be some other issue going on - as opposed to the teacher just not being very observant. I'm sort of wondering whether I should be talking to the senco or school counsellor?

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MiscellaneousAssortment · 07/10/2015 21:28

I would be asking why the teacher feels it's good teaching to ask one child to sacrifice their abilities, & future school place, because of table lay out? Or because she 'boosts' the children who have been assessed properly (we assume) by being artificially held back. Or because she need to learn, not spellings, but how to keep up with a longer test format? Or because he's decided for no child-centred reason that no child can change levels for a term (or a half term to get rid of annoying parents).

My child has just done his first EVER spelling test in year one, and 'dog' was in there amongst pin, pen, pig. Next weeks has harder words (a bit), like loft, and children. And these are universal class spelling tests. Which sound horrifyingly like they're the same level as your great big grown up yr5 Dd!!! On those grounds, I would be being persistent, polite but not beimg fobbed off.

Good luck.

Original poster
PastConditional · 07/10/2015 21:41

Thank you Miscellaneous. Just to be completely fair, the list wasn't just a list of year 1 cvc words, but was obviously designed to show different kinds of plurals, so there was dog and dogs, fox and foxes, elephant and elephants, baby and babies, trolley and trolleys. But of course it's still shockingly far below what she was last term.

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Original poster
PastConditional · 07/10/2015 21:42

What she was doing last term

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Alibabsandthe40Musketeers · 07/10/2015 22:03

LittleFish I didn't mean to get at you, i'm just a bit surprised.

I think if the teacher in the OP had said 'ok, that does seem that she is doing very easy work, let me look into it', that would be completely different. Nothing the OP related above suggested that he was going to try and gather data - he was initially going to leave reviewing until December!

LittleFishBigOcean · 07/10/2015 22:07

ali yes, I do agree that some of the comments from the teacher here wouldn't fill me with confidence that the OP's daughter was getting the right work for the right reasons. Sorry for being on the defensive.

And past I hope you manage to sort this situation soon.

Original poster
PastConditional · 07/10/2015 22:07

btw LittleFish, I didn't read Alibaba's post as suggesting that you were dismissive. I thought rather s/he was questioning whether you would have responded in the same way that dd's teacher did, which was quite dismissive, at least with regard to her previous assessment.

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Original poster
PastConditional · 07/10/2015 22:08

sorry! cross-posting

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Original poster
PastConditional · 07/10/2015 22:10

Alibaba, yes I must say I would have felt a lot better if that had been his response rather than a polite but flat "I'm happy that she's in the right group but we'll look at it again at the end of term."

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Original poster
PastConditional · 07/10/2015 22:15

I think I am going to speak to the head, who knows her reasonably well, and say that I am concerned that the work she is being given suggests that she may be performing significantly worse at school this term than last, and that there may be something wrong. Then I'll show her the list and see what she says.

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westcoastnortherneragain · 08/10/2015 03:23

In Canada here, our teachers just assess for themselves at the beginning of each year. Unless you have a designated learning issue generally they won't have a handover with the other teacher. They figure it out for themselves.

However, the list does seem very easy, leave it a few weeks and take note of her spelling scores and go to the head.

Original poster
PastConditional · 08/10/2015 09:52

Thanks WestCoast. Our school is evidently taking the Canadian route.

I don't think the weekly spelling tests will tell us much to be honest, as they are able to revise for them and she has always got 10 or occasionally 9 out of 10 for them, with very much harder words, so I don't suppose that is going to change much.

So I'm concluding that there are three possibilities. Either

a) the new teacher has got it wrong
b) all her previous teachers got it wrong
c) something has happened which has caused her work to nosedive dramatically this term

Perhaps I need to investigate c). There are a few slightly toxic friendship issues going on. She also fits a lot of the criteria for dyspraxia, but we've never gone for a diagnosis. I wonder if it is beginning to manifest in her school work now, whereas before it was only really a problem in PE etc. Argh.

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christinarossetti · 08/10/2015 10:03

If you've even the slightest concern about undiagnosed dyspraxia, then you have every reason to try to accelerate proper assessment of your dd's abilities.

Most school policies would be first step speak to class teacher, then escalate it up the pecking order.

Given that you've done the first step and aren't satisfied with the response, I would contact the head or whoever you think is most likely to understand your concerns.

You can approach it broadly ie concerns about dyspraxia/friendships impacting on her school work rather than just mentioning that her new teacher seems a bit off the mark.

Original poster
PastConditional · 08/10/2015 10:10

Thank you Christina Rossetti, yes I was thinking that this might be a constructive approach. I certainly don't want to create any bad feeling.

(I love that you can get compassionate and helpful advice from 19th Century poets on Mumsnet Grin)

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Original poster
PastConditional · 08/10/2015 18:14

Dd's teacher did at least let her have her the list of harder words today as agreed, words like "convenience" and "necessary" and "embarrassment", although he won't test her on them -
we have to do them at home if we want her to learn them (we did it on the way home without difficulty). For now she has to stick with "dogs" and "babies" at school... It's all a bit nuts to say the least.

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teacherwith2kids · 08/10/2015 19:33

"it's pretty sloppy and inconsistent in her writing"

We don't assess spelling in tests, but in general writing. So if a child is spelling easy words wrong in their general writing, then we pick thoseup and give them as spellings to learn, then see whether they are now right in the child's writing ....

This comes after finding that words learned specially 'for tests' have very little impact on the child's day to day spelling.

Might the same be happening for you?

mrz · 08/10/2015 19:58

I work on words that are spelt incorrectly in day to day writing not lists of words sent home

teacherwith2kids · 08/10/2015 20:16

It may be, for example, that plurals are something she is careless about in her general writing, and this week's spelling words / pattern is picking up on and addressing this - that is what we would do, in addition to lots of work on the difficulty in class.

teacherwith2kids · 08/10/2015 20:21

(Plural / singular obviously not my strong point this evening: 'spelling words are / spelling pattern is')