If your child was working towards in Reception.

[Socrates73]

Hi! Just curious, has anybody had a "working towards" in any area at the end of Reception. Specifically were you made aware in advance that your dc was not going to hit age related and did the school suggest ways they were trying to help them? Also did they continue to be working towards or catch up?

I have concerns that my dc will be working towards in a couple of areas (physical, social, writing) but no concerns have been raised by school.

I would imagine a lot of children will end up 'working towards' given how tough the new criteria are. Back in the day, writing your own name would be great for a 5 year old. Now they're expected to write full sentences with 2 or more connectives (and, because, so). Old Year 2 stuff.

I wouldn't worry about it personally. Not every child is going to be top of the class.

Thanks Utopia that's good to know, dc is doing great in some areas so I'm not losing sleep or anything but I think I'll be a bit surprised if his school report comes out with a working towards in it without some sort of discussion. Maybe I'm being naive though, if many children are working towards I suppose you can't meet with them all.

I think my dc will get working towards too. He can write a couple of words if someone writes them out first for him to copy. He has been out of nappies for 2 months now but he still needs reminding to go to the toilet or he will wet himself. He has global development delay so we know he is behind but we don't get much feedback from the school. We have had one meeting in November to discuss his progress and will have another one in june.

DS was working towards in most things at end of reception, but we knew that from parents meetings/discussions during the year so it wasn't really a surprise. They did various things to support his development.

We were told back in end of September that dd2 wasn't likely to hit expectations. I did tell her teacher I thought shed misjudged her a fair bit (dd2 comes across as sweet but dippy to start) and teacher now does admit she did get dd2 wrong on that initial impression. I've busted my backside all year doing lots and lots of little and often support work at home as well and now she's pretty much up to expectations in the bulk of stuff.

I know she will go up marked as not reaching expectations in physical development and the rationale for that has been discussed with me (She's very borderline and could possibly squeak it on a good day but were chasing diagnosis for her so don't want to give any chances to be fobbed off - wanting to make it clear that there is a problem there). There's talk about if she's at expected for writing which is complicated in that cognitively she can do it and generate good content , but physically she can't get it handwritten down - think at the moment that one could go either way (We have evidence what she can do with punctuation and connectives etc using things like a computer to back this up between home and the school).

We've had discussions all year ongoing with the class teacher though about what school was doing and what I was doing at home to try to support as well.

Rainbow this sounds a lot like my dc, struggles with the physical rather than the cognitive side of writing. I hope all goes well in your assessments.

Also take into account your child's age. Statistically summer born pupils are more likely not to reach goals at the end of the reception year; boys more likely than girls.
The goals are developmental yet 'assessed' at the same given point for all. An August born child could be 11 months younger than the oldest September born in the class. This represents a quarter of their little lives less to be in the same place.

Please don't worry all children develop at different rates, there isn't a general link with your future life chances. ( except for spoken language/vocabulary development).

Hello,
How do I go about teaching my ds to read/write his name? I am completely clueless, he is 3. I know it's early yet but I would like to know how to go about it for when he wants to learn.

I am so sorry, that was not meant for this thread! Obviously I need more sleep haha

OP I think you're right to expect that if your child is getting report marked "working towards", then the teacher should have discussed this with you prior to you receiving the report. I'm not in UK and have no idea whether this would policy or whatever, it just seems like common courtesy. The teacher must know you are interested in how your child does so they should be communicating with you in more ways than just sending you the report. Particularly as your child is so young - the teacher should be able to talk about progress your child has made, and what's the next step in development in each area of concern.

My eldest was "working towards" (it was a few years ago so may have been different terminology but whatever the box that means behind is) social skills (can't remember the exact phrasing) in Nursery. They hadn't mentioned in particular that he would be behind but it had certainly be raised as a concern. In reception he was classified as meeting expectations (surprisingly as he was actually behind to the extent we'd had a meeting to discuss it). I wouldn't worry too much about the box they tick in terms of targets but I'd listen to anyone concerns his teacher brings up to you. If it was a serious problem they'd have raised it with you by now.

It's actually completely normal for summer born boys to be slow with writing. Particularly bright boys tend to be much further behind with their fine motor skills than reading/maths.