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Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

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Original poster

How to ask teacher for more advanced material

97 replies

Rorymum81 · 26/09/2017 21:19

Hi, I'm new here. I have a a query. My son who is 4 and a half has just started reception.

My son has always had a good vocabulary from a fairly young age. He has been bringing home books from school as homework - they are wordless. The purpose of these is apparently for them to make up their own dialogue and to tell you what's going on and to complete the activities at the back of the book. My son does this with ease and is quickly bored. He brought home words to learn, he knows them now- no; go; to; said; the; and I.

I don't want to sound like an arrogant parent, he can't read and he can't write anything but an 'o'. He's not a genius or anything, im sure the teachers know what theyre doing but i feel that he would much prefer to learn words.

How do I approach his teacher with this?

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plantsitter · 27/09/2017 14:06

I think it's perfectly normal and desirable for parents to be more interested in their child's learning than concerned about the teacher's workload. Sorry.

However I don't think asking for extra work at 4 is in anyone's best interests. The thing about a wordless book is that he may 'complete the task with ease' but it's open-ended in terms of what vocab you can use and what story-telling structures you can use, isn't it? I personally would take the opportunity to do a bit of that before tedious subordinate clause spotting becomes of paramount importance.

user789653241 · 27/09/2017 14:09

And you think parents looking at primary education on MN are similar to most of parents in your school...

ProfessorCat · 27/09/2017 14:10

I think it's perfectly normal and desirable for parents to be more interested in their child's learning than concerned about the teacher's workload. Sorry.

Absolutely! An interest in their child's learning is fantastic and desirable. However, at 4, asking for extra work because their child completes the task quickly is both unnecessary and showing that they don't have an understanding for why the particular task has been given.

In this case, perhaps a chat with the teacher would be beneficial, so they can explain why the child has this task (at 4). I'm sorry but anything extra at this age should be down to the parent.

ProfessorCat · 27/09/2017 14:12

Irvine - which is why I said "in my personal experiences and nothing more"

However I have taught at both state and public schools. Some of both sets of parents (in my experience) lack a level of interaction with their child.

There are many "types" of people on Mumsnet, as are there many "types" of parent.

paddlingwhenIshouldbeworking · 27/09/2017 14:13

No worries Irvine you didn't snap at all!

TheNext · 27/09/2017 17:56

Reading Chest, OP. Reading Chest.

MaisyPops · 27/09/2017 22:06

An interest in their child's learning is fantastic and desirable. However, at 4, asking for extra work because their child completes the task quickly is both unnecessary and showing that they don't have an understanding for why the particular task has been given

True. There are many ways for parents to give their children nice educational experiences that don't involve going to school and pointing out how smart theu thinm their child is when they've been at school less than a month. Day trips, creative tasks at home, going ti a library or even reading books with words at home!

All these things are possible, educational and don't require getting on to school being 'that' parent.

Some, however, seem to be more concerned with letting the teacher (and other parents via school gate chatter) how advanced their DC is. Why else would anyone be ready to contact school a matter of weeks into school?

MakeMeAFloozy · 27/09/2017 22:11

I thought the same in when my son started school.
I just continued buying more interesting books and going to the library. No biggie

Anyway 1 year later the kids are expected to start reading those easy books independently. So the process makes sense.

ProfessorCat · 27/09/2017 22:23

It's rather frustrating to teach Reception and know that you will get a percentage of parents that will make sure you're aware that their child will be far more advanced than the other children in the class and will therefore require special treatment.

More often than not, it is those children that are actually distinctly average and don't have the rich experiences of some of the children with parents who don't feel the need to point out how clever their child is 😉

MidniteScribbler · 28/09/2017 03:34

It is important to remember that work sent home isn't supposed to be challenging. New concepts should be taught in class, and it's not the job of the parent at home. Enjoy reading with your child, and stop worrying about looking for more challenging work at home, he doesn't need it. As long as he is learning at school, enjoying himself, and developing an interest in the world around him, that is all that is important right now. There is no real value to homework.

Norestformrz · 28/09/2017 04:55

"The words he brought home apparently don't work with phonics which is why he has to learn them. They do phonics in class."

All words work with phonics so it's quite worrying that you are being told this and that the teacher is sending home words to learn as wholes.

Feenie · 28/09/2017 06:41

You might want to tell the selective schools that Feenie as they seem not to have got the memo.

But there are no posts on this thread that suggest any of the children are in a selective school?

Tomorrowillbeachicken · 28/09/2017 12:23

We requested and received harder work from after Christmas last year in reception. I don't regret that though as ds has some special needs but is also high ability and it was obvious he was getting bored last year and they wanted to help him with that.
We also supplemented with extra work at home.

It had been suggested by them though first and this year we are also looking at options to help him but I think we are the exception rather than the rule.

user789653241 · 28/09/2017 12:39

ProfessorCat, there are children who are actually very advanced compared to others and need special treatment.
Luckily, I didn't need to go to speak to the reception teacher, since she assessed him straight away, and first book he brought home was orange level, and soon changed to purple after 2 weeks.
As for maths, she adviced me to attend yr2 maths parent meeting in September, since he was sent to yr2. Clearly she has assessed him soon enough. She was fab teacher, and and remains my, and ds's favorite over the years.
And his homework has always been differentiated in reception. He had spelling homework while others are learning phonics to read.
(Sadly I can't say the same for later years.)

ProfessorCat · 28/09/2017 12:45

@irvineoneohone

ProfessorCat, there are children who are actually very advanced compared to others and need special treatment.

I know, I'm a teacher. If the teacher has done their job properly, they will have assessed and leveled and will teach accordingly. But the child has probably already been assessed and given appropriate work.

Unfortunately, some parents don't seem to understand that what they see as advanced, is quite often average.

user789653241 · 28/09/2017 13:24

Professor, I know you are a dedicated teacher. Otherwise you wouldn't spend time advising strangers on the anonymous forum.
But from your earlier post, you do remind me of my ds's yr1 teacher, who was worst one ever for him.(Though she had a great reputation for bringing up levels for less able children, and some parents raved about her greatness.)
She lost my trust when she started mentioning, take him out to the park(which I did almost everyday), l should cook together with him (which I already did since he was 3 and he is a pretty good cook now), or play games(yes we do play games), do some craft(I am a quite good artist so I do that already), etc, etc.

She was a young teacher, so she may never met anyone with above expected ability. But reception teacher was oldest one in school, so she must have seen some over the years.

But anyway, someone gives us suggestions like that, is underestimating parents and have fixed view of parents of able children, thinking we are only interested in academics and nothing else, I assume. So I tend to disregard their opinions.

ProfessorCat · 28/09/2017 13:36

Irvine, that's totally fair enough and I can imagine pretty patronising when you did those things anyway. Again, a teacher with experience can usually "tell" a parent that does these things, if that makes sense, so it would have got my back up as a parent.

My DD is more able and talented herself. She's bilingual and has an aptitude for maths. She's been reading since she was 3. Thankfully, her reception teacher recognised this immediately and she was moved into maths and language groups in the year 2 class, with my permission.

There are so many variables in this situation, it depends on the child, the parent and the teacher. I was just pointing out that lots of parents think their child is above average academically when sometimes they just aren't

I hope that makes sense - I'm off sick today and my brain isn't working properly.

user789653241 · 28/09/2017 13:51

Hope you feel better soon, professor.

(To be honest, I sometimes find it very weird talking about my ds on MN,
people don't know him, and I maybe telling a big fat lies.)

bearstrikesback · 28/09/2017 14:08

Irvine, in your experience, what proportion of your DS's teachers have you felt acknowledged and worked with your DS's ability?

DD is starting Y2 and I have yet to see any challenge given to her - she gets given worksheets with the others and one recent example was her completion of the sheet (a list of 12 addition sums) before the child next to her had finished writing his name at the top. She was then given further sheets which she also completed at the same speed and then just read a book until the others finished (that she brought in from home).

We have worked with DD at home (no more than 15 minutes a day on maths) and she can easily manage column addition and subtraction, long multiplication, mixed fractions, negative numbers, times tables etc. She just picks up things easily and I am concerned that we are going to hit the boredom issue because she is not actually learning anything new. I don't wish to upset the teacher as both I and DD really like her, but I don't know how to broach it without it coming across as negative.

ProfessorCat · 28/09/2017 14:19

Thank you Irvine

Bearstrikesback - that's awful differentiation. Do they not have a progressive maths ICT system they can jump on if they finish their work (Sumdog, RMEasi Maths, Abacus etc)?

I would speak to the teacher on this occasion as they clearly aren't providing work at her level and this should have been addressed by now.

Mayhemmumma · 28/09/2017 14:23

Don't worry it's very early in the first term, it'll get more demanding. My DD could read and write in reception but actually doing to basics with her new class mates helped her confidence and her focus was more on making friends.

Ask him to pick books with words if he can? (My children get to choose)

Tomorrowillbeachicken · 28/09/2017 14:27

It depends on the child, in reception the only thing demanding was pe for my son and only because he has dcd.

Tomorrowillbeachicken · 28/09/2017 14:29

And writing but that's getting better fast now.

bearstrikesback · 28/09/2017 14:37

Thank you ProfessorCat - it's not great but thankfully DD is still at the finding it amusing stage as she is generally a very jolly child. The ICT approach would be great for her as she has a lot of maths games on her iPad and loves them - squeebles maths race and bingo, rush hour, dragon box etc and has just discovered the lego mindstorms. I think I may have to gently suggest that, as we have been back for a few weeks now and I would have thought she should have been assessed by now.

catkind · 28/09/2017 15:27

No-one spotted DD's abilities until we pointed it out at the 8 week in parents' evening. They reassessed and agreed she was very advanced after that so am not a deluded parent. Indeed normally I find I massively over-estimate what average looks like.

Differentiation has been few and far between though. I dream of DD being allowed to do some work with a more appropriate year group.

DS is probably more comparable to OP's DS. Very bright and fast learning pace but not that ahead as he doesn't do much at home. He's found school very frustrating. At least with DD you can point to achievement to show she needs more.

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