Any early years teachers out there...just had parents' evening- need some opinions. am feeling rather upset.

[noonar]

hi.
dd1 is 5.5. we've just had her first year 1 parents' evening.

dd is a bright, articulate girl with a fantastic vocabulary. she loves school.

she has found it hard to 'click' with her reading. she now knows dozens of key words and can read simple text eg ' This is the dog. We like this dog.' without any hesitation. ( i realize that many of her peers can rwead more fluently)

the thing is, she still hasnt , when assessed, shown that she knows ALL the expected key words for her age. She has failed to recognize about 6 out of 50 odd words when assessed.

i was not at all worried by this. the teacher said that she'd now be on some kind of reading program aimed to boost her sight vocab. i still was not worried.

then she said....'so we're talking mild special needs' (for reading)

i explained that i had a bit of a problem with the label...just because she needs to learn a few words that her peers (mostly)already know, does that mean she has SEN?!

what do you think? am reeling a bit, tbh. do you think that this label of SEN is appropriate?

noonar I am not surprised you are upset, I would be too. Do they really use the term SEN for things like this? I saw someone else has said that she will get extra help - are you sure about this? I don't think it is helpful to label a child like this if they simply can't recognize 6 words on some government created list.

SEN - I would say, as a Year 1 teacher, all my children have SEN - they all need support to extend or support them with things they find difficult.

Early intervention is the key - support them now and then stop. Would you rather the teacher did nothing?

TBH I think the teacher was a little silly to use the term SEN, but maybe she on stage 1 of their register!

But I do think you are over-reacting. Chill and let the teacher support your child. Did she get all the early learning goals?

crazzybabs - are you saying all your own children or all the children that you teach? If all the children that you teach then surely it is not SEN but more that we set unrealistic goals for them at that age?

My DS is 6 (August) and in Year 2. His handwriting is an issue and his teacher said she was "worried" about it. I am not. He is only 6 and hasn't been particularly interested. He is getting there. I would have been horrified if she said that he was mild SEN. They all develop differently at that age.

If this is "special needs" then I would say that 20 out of the 30 children in my ds's class last year would be so classified! (I was a parent helper - that's how I know!)

Bonkers thing to say in my opinion. I would have a word with the Head.

Oh it is all so ridiculous. I had that with my ds in nursery (uk), kindergarten (usa), 1st grade(usa) and now 2nd grade(usa). I was told that he was deficient in this and slow in that and needed extra help. I have been told that he was going to "fail" nursery, 1st and 2nd grade (somehow managed to escape that distinction in kindergarten). And in each year he ended up being one of the top students in the class. (we're still working on 2nd grade, but so far has aced all tests). Nursery teacher was sure that his fine motor skills were deficient because he "couldn't" write his name....stupid woman hadn't bother to note that as his name is quite long, he was writing his sister's much shorter name instead. In 1st grade he was sent for extra reading because he was the only one who "couldn't" read at the start of the year. Or perhaps he was the only one who claimed he couldn't read...as it turned out he was no more behind than any of the others. He was simply bored with the books they were trying to get him to read and decided that it was easier to pretend he couldn't read them. Poor thing ended up getting sent for extra reading with the same books. Luckily we did more interesting stuff at home. And this year, teacher has told me "he doesn't have a clue of what is going on in class" and that he's "attention deficit" in the first week of school. Her evidence....he was reading books while she was lecturing. Seems to me to more mostly just evidence of her boring lectures and ds' inappropriate way of dealing with them.
By the way, I am having absolutely none of these type of complaints with dd who is perfectly bright, but probably less advance than ds was at the same age, but somehow better able to pretend to be/know what the teacher wants.

All of this is to say, I have learned to save my energy for my ds and supplementing what he gets in school. And not to waste my energy trying to convince his teachers that he really is a bright interesting child. So far they have figured it out by the end of the school year each year. And he is perfectly happy and oblivious and getting what he needs to out of school. I hope that when he's older he'll have more stimulating teachers who can recognize his personality from the get-go.
Good luck.
PS Not all children are able to learn reading from sight words. Chances are that if she isn't performing as well with the sight words, she'll still do just fine with the phonics. They shoudl be teaching both methods nowadays.

I totally agree SA
My son has a cooperation issue in that he doesn't weant to do something -then he won't. As I said earlier he took the micky out of the shape assessment at nursery as they were presented to him on a worksheet -he was 3.4 ish at the time- and asked to name each one in turn. She pointed at a cirle he says' errrr square!' with that little grin on his face he does to take the p*ss. She told me a couple of weeks later 'Oh, Mrs Muppet, he does know his shapes doesn't he...' when she observed him playing rather than cold assessing. I said, yes, he does and has done since last year...

As for the writing his name and being 'behind' with writing at 3.7 (as his friends was but we moved my son) he would have been labelled a faiure at 3.....he's not interested in writing and if he is made to write/colour in then he'll do it so badly he hopes you won't ask him again.

Personally I have worked in 2 Beacon schools and their idea of sen was to put a child on an IEP for ridiculous things that really aren't considered SEN at all. I have also worked in a school that had failed its' Ofsted and was in special measures where I had 17 children in my class from yr3-5 who were all, bar about 2/3 severe SEN ranging from Autism, dyslexia, behavioural problems etc and half of them weren't on any IEP at all.

If your child can recognise these words more often than not in context then I would not worry. I know already that I have a son that had I still been teaching would have to write on his report
'Master Muppet shows great understanding verbally, but this is not alwasy reflected in his written work'

I do agree with the poster who said be careful what you do at home though, you wouldn't want her to get upset but extra coaching from you if she's already getting extra coaching from school.

Ask for another meeting nearer the end of term to discuss her progress, ask to see evidence of what the teacher is talking about and keep a close eye.

To clarify - all my children have special needs because they all need support for different things...wether it is because they are very able, or because they are average they all have special needs...it is term that has come to have a negative meaning when infact all childrne have indivial (or indeed special) needs...

Haven't read all the posts but I had a v similar thing last year with my daughter in yr 1 parents' evening I was told she was a year behind her reading age which as she was 5 I found hard to believe. She didn't like reading at that time. She has since come on and is fine. I think they like to put kids in boxes but they don't all develop at the same pace. You know your daughter best!

thankyou so much, SA, MG and others for your v helpful and interesting posts.

i totally agree with carbonel that 'SEN for reading at this age is nonsense'. i instinctively know that this is true, and cant help feeling frustrated at her (two)teachers' apparent failure to agree with what i, and (almost) everyone else on this thread is saying!

cazz, it is this frustration that they are labelling my bright dd in a negative way, that has caused me to react. i'm delighted that she's being supported, but not delighted about the label.

you also mentioned early learning goals. in her foundation stage profile she achieved level 7 for reading , writing and all other 'academic' objectives. she got a level 8 and 9 for the creative and emotional development 'objectives'.

apologies for my late return to this thread. we have been away for a few days.