Not bashing, school have not been in contact at all, what should we do?

[drspouse]

Highly aware that teachers are under masses of pressure.
DH is KW and currently he's quarantining in the spare room (due to upcoming hospital appointment not symptoms), DS has SEN and his school have been great, loads of work packs, calling every day.
DD has been in on average one day a week but will do next to nothing at home. She's in Y1 and has an IEP.
Today she screamed for 10 minutes then read four pages, took 45 minutes to find 3 words in a word search, did crafts (she'd happily do only crafts, ever),

I emailed her teacher 10 days ago to say she was not coping. No reply. Not a single phone call the whole time she's been off. No emails.

We can't read some of the work set on the school website and the rest is too hard for her e.g. phonics way ahead of where she is, she's only just doing one more/one less. School said they were going to give the class the same choice boards in class, we asked the class teacher to let us know what she had done (she never tells us) on days she's in. No answer to that either.
What can we do now? I'm trying to work, she's learning nothing and just getting upset, DH can't help but she won't do anything for him normally anyway, she was already really behind!

At first I read your post and thought the school had dropped the ball a little, easily done, there is so much going on at the moment. But after seeing your replies, you are expecting personalised learning for your child and that is impossible for a teacher to provide at a distance. I think you need to look into finding an online tutor for your child. They could prepare specific work for your child and help you deliver it. Saying this I would continue to contact school and explain your concerns so that they can help in any way they can, copy in the head the any further emails that you send. But please lower your expectations!

I have to say the most online learning has very little aimed towards differentiation.

Those with SEN have been left behind and like the OP says would benefit from teacher engagement.

There has been very little of that here!

@GreenTulips we have books, that's one thing we have loads of.

How this thread has gone:
Me: are other schools doing X? What should we do? We've tried ABCDE and they haven't worked and we have contacted the school but they haven't replied.
Posters W though Z: you MUST try A through E.
Poster V: yes, I'd contact the school again
Me: yes, we'll try the school again.
Posters W through Z: BUT WHY WON'T YOU TRY A THROUGH E?

OK, I have taught children working at this level. Worksheets are not what you mainly need, nor are videos. You need hands on learning. Worksheets are fine for evidence of the learning, but they are not the learning. Videos can be useful to support the learning.

So if she's working on one more or one less, you can practise these. Get five bits of pasta. Ask her how many. Ask her to get one more. How many now?

For Phonics, you say she knows some sounds but not all. Do you know which sounds she does know?

It does take your time, but little to no prep. It might not move her on quickly, but might help prevent her going backwards.

I get that it's really annoying that your school haven't been in contact or been responsive. Ten days to respond to an email is not OK. But there are some things you cna do in the absence of a teacher. Happy to help with more ideas.

Oh, and a phone call to the school might be best if you want to get her in for more days - her teacher will likely have no say over this.

I know you have an IEP but without an EHCP, right now the school is not obliged to provide differentiated work. Even EHCP students I know are not getting a differentiated programme. In an ideal world they would but schools have been permitted to suspend a lot of the help they provide through EHCP's if they cannot meet it right now. just as you are 'fire fighting' education at home, the school are having to deal with things differently to what they would pre pandemic.

The only reason I suggest you keep emailing the school is to provide that paper trail. That way when the wheels inevitably fall off, you have the evidence that you tried to bring this to their attention sooner.

The only issue you legitimately have right now is that the school are not responding to your emailed concerns. Other than escalating this up through the complaints system they should have detailed on their website, I don't see how to get this dealt with other than on their monitored facebook page.

@qweryuiop that's worth trying.
She knows the sounds at the start of the books at her level (yellow) but I'm not sure what's next or how to teach phonics! And she still mixes up b/d/g/p/refuses to believe in q sometimes (IT'S A g MUMMY YOU'RE WRONG).

School have "eigh" and "s vs c" this week so that's no help.

They are happy to have her more days (in fact, DH rang when he found out about his op and they said email them with days, I now remember, so someone is reading emails!). But right now as I say we don't want her in more than we can help (we're both trying to plan meetings on a limited number of days and send her then, to reduce the noise factor, and keep her home the other days)

Mixing up those letters is developmentally normal (though more usually in writing, and if it continues into year 3, then it can be a sign of dyslexia or other developmental delays). If it causes her to argue, it might be best to ignore it for a bit and see if she starts to recognise it on her own (children can be very stubborn, especially with send)

As for q, it never exists on her own - its "qu", which makes the same sound as the start of "queen"

Phonics is relatively easy to teach luckily (I don't mean to be dismissive - it's certainly not easy to teach when you've been thrown in at the deep end without contact with her teacher!). The key thing to remember is to pronounce all sounds as they sound in words (so T is "t" not "tee" or "tuh").

It sounds as if she knows phase 2 and is working on phase 3 if she's reading yellow books with some confidence. The best place for Phonics resources to print is probably twinkl. You can just print their phase 2 phonic mat and their phase 3 phonic mat, or they have individual cards if larger print would motivate her. And you can play very simple games like "find a g" or "what does this say".

For games, there's Phonics play, letters and sounds.com, phonicsbloom, all of which I have used and found successful and popular with send children. Play the games at phase 2 if you want them to be easy for her, or phase 3 if you want them to be hard.

Have you tried contacting family support through social services? My two have send issues, and it got to a point where we were all suffering, so I contacted them and they were able to arrange some low key support for us as a family (mainly a bit of time at school). It has helped massively for us, they’re both so much more calmer and content. I mean they’re not doing much learning, but at least they get to see other children.

My youngest is about two years behind, I’ve concentrated on reading and not much else to be honest. I’m not a teacher, and I haven’t a clue about the targeted stuff school were doing with him. So I’ve left it and just accepted he’s going to be a bit stalled for now.

Can you do hands on maths learning with her, with leaves, pasta, lego bricks, frozen peas, whatever? One more, one less, dividing and multiplying by 2 etc.
If you did half an hour of that every day, read to her for half an hour, and asked her to tell you a story based on a picture for half an hour, that would be enough and would free up your afternoon.

I think we will try the hands on maths but honestly engaging in anything like telling a story for half an hour is a bit unrealistic! Unless you count the time spent saying "it's too tricky" and "I don't know" and me saying "OK, tell me when you're ready" and her writing one letter or getting 3 Lego bricks out and then saying "it's too tricky" again!

For the phonics, have you looked at the Letters and Sounds videos on YouTube? The reception ones started on the sounds for yellow books (part way through Phase 3, on ai, oa etc). 6 weeks on they are now on Phase 4, which I think is blue books. The old videos are all available and are numbered, if you search on YouTube for 'Letters and Sounds Reception 1' it will find the first one. A new one is released each weekday, they are currently on number 30. They are a 25 minute long phonics lesson, with flashcards, reading words and sentences and a little bit of spelling at the end.

If the reception ones are too easy then there are also the year 1 videos which start at the beginning of phase 5 -ie other ways of writing sounds like 'ay' rather than 'ai'.

DS doesn't have any additional needs but does do much better with a video teacher doing his phonics than with me, I just have to supervise to make sure he doesn't wander off to play.

The hairy phonics apps from Nessy are really good and would help her make more progress with phonics.

Is that Ruth somebody? Someone mentioned it but it didn't really register that it was free as they said their school has a subscription or similar.

Sorry that was to Duck.

Seems you haven’t realised yet that education wise at primary level we are all on our own. It’s every man for himself. You will need to swot up and work out how to teach your child yourself.

I wouldn’t bother with Letters and Sounds if you can get something better that does it all. Letters and Sounds is what the government put in place to be used when there weren’t any decent phonics courses about. Ruth minskin is Read, Write, Inc.

Honestly Sounds -Write on the app and Maths Factor. That should do you if you do it daily. The rest of the time crafts is fine. A little of something decent is better than a lot of stress.

You will need to swot up and work out how to teach your child yourself.
Which would be fine if the problem was that we had no materials. But we had loads of time, teaching expertise and a willing and able child. We instead have zero time and a child who can't understand the materials she's been given and no experience in how to teach basic skills for this age.
Or maybe all the other parents are finding their DCs are not able to do any of the home learning the school sets either?

We all face this. Primary staff are missing in action. We’re on our own.

@drspouse no Ruth something is the Read Write Inc ones. They also have videos on YouTube, which we also use - but they teach the sounds in a different order so unless your DD is already doing Read Write Inc it will just be confusing. There are also multiple different videos you have to do each day choosing the correct level each time - the Letters and Sounds ones are just one longer video so easier to use.

The Letters and Sounds videos are currently being produced by the Department of Education because of lockdown and are free.

The only way you will get what you want is pay for it and go private. The state system can not / will not provide education atm and certainly definitely not the differentiated sort you are demanding.

I sympathise about the glitchy apps but I think if you already have Teach My Monster to Read and could add Reading Eggs and Maths Seeds, then an hour of those in the morning and crafts in the afternoon would suffice. At least all three of those programmes monitor progress.

I cannot get Y2 DD (probable SEN) to do any work at all for me and I'm a teacher (not primary). It is very stressful.

If she is struggling to count in 2s it's all about repetition- same as learning to count.

I use to use you tube songs a lot with my class - lots of them have actions to go with them or funny videos. Some of them are very cheesy and American but they work.

MrsT thanks for that helpful and productive thought.
Lots of state school teachers are calling pupils, making video lessons, responding to children and providing differentiated work. Take a stroll over to the Staffroom and you'll see them. I think this is what's so frustrating as I can now see inside other schools!

@Phineyj as I said upthread Reading Eggs isn't phonics based and we found Maths Seeds really variable in level and hard to navigate so we didn't extend the free trial. We're happy to pay (we get books from Reading Chest, she still screams, we pay for Doodle Maths, she does 5 minutes quite happily but no more really) but not for something that doesn't work!

@practicallyperfectwithprosecco that is a nice suggestion but I just don't have time to find the right materials. I also don't really know what she should be covering as there is such a gap between what she can do and what your rest of the class seem to be up to.
She doesn't seem to benefit from things like Numberblocks in the same way as DS. He'll come away telling you all about squares and ready to build them in Lego. She won't remember what addition is. I have a friend whose DS has mild SEN too and said the same - the DS has watched every episode of Numberblocks multiple times yet it's still a surprise that two numbers add together in a certain way.