How do I approach this with my DD's teacher?

[dfghj]

My daughter is in P4 and left for the summer in top reading group. She is a voracious reader and sent much of her holiday reading the while How to Train Your Dragon series. Her best treat is visiting a book shop or library and all her friends ask her for recommendations.

At the risk of sounding like a terrible person, I have heard her classmates read and she is head and shoulders better than most of them.
So she returned to school confident of being in top group again.
However the class has merged with another (private school so class still only 20) and my daughter is now in the 3rd reading group.

Now I don't have a problem with that per se, as the class now has some accelerated learners and other very able girls. And I know that reading alone does not determine the grouping, as they are also judged on comprehension skills etc.

My worry is the fact that my daugher's confidence has taken a big knock and I think the teacher should explain to her that she is still an excellent reader and that she can work towards moving up a group by improving whatever skills required.

I have an appt to see her teacher on Monday morning. How do I put this to the teacher? I basically want to ask her to praise my child so she doesn't lose her love of reading by feeling she's not good enough. Do I just say as much?
With thanks.

Recommend this free site for reading comprehension.

www.readtheory.org/

Group 3 might not mean 3rd best...it might just be the way the teacher has named them. In our classroom, for ease, we call our tables 1,2,3,4...but the abilities sitting at them are not always 'top' or 'bottom', and quite often they are mixed ability.
I think you should try to make sure she is not always comparing herself to others. Some children don't read aloud fluently, but can read well silently , and have good comprehension. Whatever group she's in, there will be a reason for it.

For ease I have named my tables but they are cities in our class country. For example if our class was Great Britain, the tables would be London, Manchester... That way there is no "order", they are just names so they know where to sit. I wouldn't number them, that would immediately make children think they were being graded in order.

So all the parents will assume that London is the top group (capital city)

Just say to the teacher what you have posted here, because of course she won't have worked it out for herself.
She may also not be quite as good a reader as you think in comparison with other children.

mrz yeah my dd would be Y4 then

mrz, the children sit at different tables each day (depending on how many are in the group and which table has enough seats). I've thought this through.

BeingATwattIsABingThing obviously you've not read many ability group threads ... making assumptions about the reasons behind names is a national pastime and moving around cause for debate

At my ds's school group names are really obvious. eg. cake... very simple ones to fancy named ones. Shapes...more vertices higher etc.

I am sure parents put more thought into group names than the teachers do.

I think some teachers are bit thoughtless sometimes though.....worst group name ds ever had was cookies/biscuits. Top group was millionaire's short bread or something. Bottom was digestive. Wonder what she was thinking???

one class had 2d shapes as maths groups, the more sides the shape had the higher the group. and all the children knew.

At the private school that my dd went to for a very short (not enough) while, they didn't bother with niceties. My dd was put into the lowest math group which was called Remedial Math. I was not very happy as dd is actually excellent at math but has a learning difference which means that she can't do calculations in her head (ie needs fingers or a piece of paper or a calculator) which some (not very good) teachers confuse with an inability to understand math concepts, despite the many (very expensive) testing assessments and documents that dd has which say otherwise.

I do think that ability grouping can be helpful sometimes, but often it's just a way of reinforcing insecurities at an early age. By high school it's mostly just a way of separating the kids who are interested in education from those who aren't.

Ability grouping is a way of ensuring the challenge is set at an appropriate level for the child. This is meant to boost their confidence because they will be challenged in a way that is not out of their reach. By not differentiating the work, you set some children up for failure and some won't be challenged and so will never move forward. Occasionally it is helpful to use mixed ability groupings but not always is this effective or helpful.

There are, of course, many downsides to ability grouping. One, the lower attaining children can feel disheartened if they know they are in the bottom group. Two, the higher attaining children become "cocky" if they know they are "the best" and they can stop putting in the effort to learn.

No method is perfect, but when you have 30 children to think about, you have to choose the method that will ensure they all progress.

Ability grouping has been shown to have little positive effect in primary schools.

Based on 30 years of evidence and research

Can I see some of this research?

Sutton Trust
Institute of Education
Education Endowment Foundation

Are some of the more recent

Being, do you think you ability group or not? Your first post suggests that you don't in the 'traditional' sense, but your 09:16 post sounds like you think you do.

I do ability group but they aren't fixed groups. I don't expect the same group of children to all move at the same pace every lesson. I group my children based on the objectives they need to achieve and whether they need to move on from the previous lesson or whether they need more work on it. So each lesson (specifically in maths), the children will sit in ability groups but those groups will change daily depending on the child's progress. This helps me to achieve personalised learning whilst using ability groups to make it managable.

I hope that makes sense.

That's what I thought. It might be a difference in terminology used then. That's more 'mixed ability teaching' than ability grouping, it's flexible dependent on the individual child's needs at that point in time.

I think the sort of thing that's normally referred to as ability grouping is more fixed. So children might be put in fixed groups for literacy/numeracy and those groups are only changed every half term or so after assessment. Often with evenly sized groups.

IMO mixed ability teaching doesn't mean not differentiating, it means differentiating at the level of the individual child rather than the group they are in. Which is what you seem to be doing.

For ease I have named my tables but they are cities in our class country. For example if our class was Great Britain, the tables would be London, Manchester... That way there is no "order", they are just names so they know where to sit. I wouldn't number them, that would immediately make children think they were being graded in order.

Kids know! Give them some credit!

If X is in Y group it's the top - if P is in Z group it's the bottom

One of my ds was once in a class with set groups named after Penguins - Emperor, King, Adelie, Rockhopper, and Macaroni. In that order!

Cody I think that needs to be read in the context of Beings other posts.

As I understand it she names the tables, not the groups. Children will be sitting on differently named tables with different children on different days. And the name is not linked to ability. If there is no link between the name an ability then children can't correctly ascribe one.

Although as mrz said, that won't stop some parents attempting to make that link because they think there must be one.

There is a macaroni penguin?!? That's awesome! I'd want to be in that group!