Progressing through sets and Mum guilt

[MrsLSR]

Really needing some advice please. My daughter is an August baby, and is the youngest in her year (Yr 1). I have massive health issues, both physical and mental and so really struggled to do any home schooling- I was also run off my feet looking after my mum, who has health issues too and had two big heart attacks in the past year (only exacerbating my stress and mental health issues). My daughter is now around a year behind where she should be in almost every area in her schooling, and is in bottom sets for everything. I have massive mum guilt, which, again, is detrimentally affecting my mental health. I have no support network so am struggling to do everything on my own- and it's just so hard. I am university educated, and my daughter's dad has two MA's- I really want my daughter to go to grammar school and excel in her education, and love school the way I did- but her being so behind has affected her confidence and is making her not want to try. It's so difficult motivating her and encouraging her.

I plan on spending the summer assisting my daughter as best I can to "catch up" and cover all those areas she's missed or struggles with so that hopefully she will be moved up a set. I'd love her to be able to eventually go to grammar school. I feel so much guilt about my daughter being in the bottom sets as I feel it's my fault- and want to do the best I can to help her improve by doing some intensive work with her over the summer and beyond.

What courses/ books etc can people recommend for me to use please? Has anyone any experience of their child progressing from the bottom sets to the top sets? Thank you.

They can crawl their way up.
Practise reading at home a lot.
Cgp books or collins for maths.
My summerborn went from not meeting expectations y1 to within the 'top' 25th centile.
We did a lot of work wt home though between y2 and y4.
Imo the maths especially is pretty hard in youngest years for the summer borns. They need more 1-2-1 than you get in a classroom

CGP books were recommended on here to me and are great. We did a page a day last summer after year 1 to recap the year 1 maths and it massively helped confidence. Do use number cubes, Lego, etc as well if it helps.

Maybe your focus on wanting to send her to grammar school is making things worse (you mention it a couple of times in your post)? Surely there are two things at play here - firstly, the catching up of lockdown work, and secondly your desire to send her to an academically selective school. She is only in Year 1. Concentrate on sorting the catch up bit and you don’t need to really consider the grammar bit until Year 4. Looking at everything all at once can be so overwhelming.

You sound like a fab parent. As a previous poster said, the CGP books are good. I would also speak to the school as they may have some resources you can use, and also help you to identify key areas of focus.

As a mum of an end of August baby who passed the grammar 11+, they do catch up. Be warned though that grammars aren’t right for every child, and within the grammar options the schools can be all very different. There’s no way I would have sent her to one of the top performing grammars in the country in our area - it was a miserable and quite depressing place. The girls seemed stressed out, extra curricular activities felt like box ticking as opposed to real passions, and arts subjects were being cut due to funding issues. Many of the girls have a tutor outside school as they are tutored to high heaven to get a place and then struggle to keep up. Not all schools are equal and it amazed me that this “holy grail” of educational establishments gave us all such bad vibes.

So, for now, forget secondary school. Give her a love of learning and help find her passions. There will be a future school out there that’s right for her, grammar or not. She has a few years before you know what kind of person she is and where will be best fit. Right now, just think short term.

As a secondary teacher this makes me very sad indeed. Your child is so young and so much can change between now and secondary school. I’m a bit bemused by the idea of children that young being put into sets. Sorting children that young by “ability” seems a bit mad to me.
Do what you can to support her to love learning. Get her to enjoy maths and reading and keep the practice that you do low pressure and enjoyable. Don’t turn learning into a chore and if the school are fostering a belief that she is “behind” or “low ability” then move her. Feeling negative about learning and not enjoying school will be far more damaging academically than not getting into grammar school.

Reading Eggs (including mathseeds) and Maths Factor we're good for my 5yo last year.

Do you really mean sets? Or is it that your DC is in a low group for Read Write Inc, and being given additional maths catch up, for example?
Setting children in Y1 would be really, really unusual and contrary to all research on effective practice, at least in a state school.
State or private, I would talk to their teacher and tell them you want to help catch up over the summer and what could you do which will reinforce what they have been taught in class? Could they give you books and other materials to use between now and September, or point you to compatible materials and guidance?
Then little and often.
Read daily - both to your DC in a peaceful time together, and have her read to you.
If she needs catch-up phonics, which sounds highly likely, work 10-15 mins a day with the programme the school gove you, and/or failing that, a Youtube search for the daily phonics sessions put out during lockdown by RWI or the English Hubs for Letters and Sounds - do those along with her.
For maths, lots of fun games and real-life activities. Suggesting baking sounds like a cliche, but it is a great context for maths work etc.
Establish a routine and keep it all light and positive.
Your angst over her possible fate at 11 comes across so strongly in your post. Forget that. Think about her now. If whatever happened over lockdown is the cause, she will probably catch up quickly with a routine and normality and a bit of extra help. If she continues to struggle, then agonising over her not achieving ehat you dreamed a child of yours might do could be really harmful- she is your daughter, and you will help her achieve her potential, whatever that is.

@randomsabreuse

Reading Eggs (including mathseeds) and Maths Factor we're good for my 5yo last year.

I agree with this. Also, teach your monster to read. The Numberblocks episodes are fab too.

Other than that, lots of play, read to her lots and encourage her to read what she can. Visit the library.

Make a diary of the summer encouraging your dd to say a sentence and work together to write it. Count the words, sound out each word, add a capital letter and full stops and read it back to make sure it makes sense.

I went to the park with Mummy.

Draw a picture.

If writing is a problem, lots of Lego, Aquabeads, anything involving fine motor skills and finger strength as that is definitely the weakness with app based learning. If she likes drawing then encourage that too but don't push writing practice too hard, it comes with the general fine motor development more than specific practice.

Not the point, but why on earth are children in sets in Year 1?

In terms of stuff over the summer, I'd suggest making it fun. For maths, play board games and do things like cooking. If she likes the timetables music rhymes you could get her to practice those. Read lots, both her reading to you and you reading to her. Get her to read signs and cereal boxes and leaflets in places you go. Go places. Talk about the things around you and show her how you'd find out more (e.g. I wonder what sort of duck that is?). Suggest she keeps a holiday "diary" - this might just be a few words a day, or if she enjoys it she can do more and add pictures or write postcards to grandparents/other friends or family. Make up stories. You say a line and she says what comes next.

What was it you found hard about doing homeschooling? Have your circumstances changed, otherwise I'd be concerned that aiming to do lots of catch up work over the summer would be setting you and your DD up for a difficult time?

If you are OK with screen time and it's not something you've tried and found not to work in your circumstances, I'd agree with the recommendation for Teach your Monster to read. For maths, if you have an iPad (it's not available on Android) my DD is really enjoying Maths 3-5 which links in with what they are supposed to do at school. If she's finishes that, there's then Maths 4-6.

We are also being provided with DoodleMaths / Spelling / English by school. DoodleMaths starts at reception level, the other two at year 1. It's not anything like as much fun as the two apps above, but there are assessments to see where your child needs to start, and it then goes through the national curriculum. How fast it goes apparently depends on how they do. You are supposed to do a little bit (10 min ish) each day and I can see how it is helping fill in gaps for my year 1 DS. If you found working out where to start / doing the teaching hard Doodle or a similar alternative might take part of the responsibility off your shoulders?

Has the teacher actually told you she is behind or is this your anxiety talking? What can your daughter do and what areas does she seem to find tricky?

Children shouldn’t be in sets in Year 1. I also have an August-born DD, and her class are in loose ability groups for reading but they are never told who is in the ‘top’ or ‘bottom group.

I broke my back a few years ago in an accident. I am fine now but have been left with mobility issues and a lot of pain. My medications leaves me very tired and I had to give up work. Out simply- I didn’t have the energy to do a lot of home schooling and skipped it a lot. I feel so so terrible about that but truthfully- I couldn’t manage at all due to the high doses of several meds than I’m on. Also struggled with my mental health due to lockdown, my mum etc. It was a very very difficult time for me personally and I feel so much guilt at letting my daughter down and desperately want to help her improve. I’ve actually come off my meds against medical advice because though I’m in a lot of pain and struggle more than ever with my mobility I am more cognisant now and am able to attend to my daughter the way I need to.

My daughter is in a large school with 4 classes per year. Children are placed in each class based on their ability- and my daughter is in the bottom. Though not officially “sets” they effectively are.

Sorry for the typos. My phone has had it! X

Numberblocks is fantastic, there are 5 series now.
Reading eggs is so much better now it had Fast Phonics on it.

Daily reading is something I do and would be my first priority.

The children spend all of the time in one class that they have been assigned to by their ability in reception????? This is totally outrageous and unacceptable if I have understood you correctly. It is the school with the problem and not your daughter. I would definitely be looking for another school as setting like this becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Research shows that 88% of kids who are set in reception are still in the same set in Y6. I can't say it strongly enough CHANGE HER SCHOOL.
FWIW, my summer born Y1 grandson (I parent him) has moved from the bottom maths group to the top one this academic year but that was because of his lack of desire (as a just turned 5 year old boy) to record during the Autumn term. I am a teacher and knew that he had an aptitude for maths but his teacher did not recognise it until he did very well on a standardised test they gave them around Easter time and all of a sudden he was catapulted from the bottom group to the top group...

Primary teacher here. The disadvantage of being summer born does even out as children get older.
The "sets" thing sounds very odd - I've never come across a school where Year 1s are streamed like that. Are you sure they haven't grouped some of the summer born children together so they can put extra resources into helping them catch up? I have seen that before.

Daily reading is essential, but it doesn't have to be reading scheme based. Your child's class teacher may be able to suggest good books to use at home. Just the reading books from school are not enough. Use your local library too and e-books to access a large bank of books. Make a note of words/sounds your child doesn't know and work on those. Ask lots of comprehension questions, make it a game to quiz her about what she has read. You sound like a family who have books at home, let her see you reading for pleasure. Always share books at bedtime.

Alphablocks and Number blocks are good, also Topmarks website has lots of early counting and reading games, CBBC/CBEEBIES website has lots of early learning activities.

Count things around the house, get her to do kitchen maths, e.g. how many apples in the fruit bowl? How many bananas? Can you count how many pieces of fruit altogether? Measure how many steps to go from one room to another. Print off some shape-tracing, letter-tracing sheets. Etc, etc.
You don't seem to mention how her dad is helping. You said he is well-educated. Why does the home learning all have to fall on you? Does he not read with her, help her with learning activities, do bedtime stories? Maybe he works a lot but he still needs to do his share. Is he concerned about her progress?

I would agree with both Maths Factor and Reading Eggs, both of which can be done by the child independently. However I'd also agree that she may catch up over time and not to let your expectations add pressure.

It's a shame you are focusing already on grammar school. I think they take age into account in the 11+. I went to grammar school and would say it's not necessarily the best fit for everyone.

We're both teachers and found at that age both ours made progress over the summer hols - but not from doing catch up or work sheets.

I would recommend:-

• reading
• looking at nature
• baking & bring maths into it
• art work & discuss colours
• learn flags & capital cities
• teach key skills like home address

You could also sign her up to something fun for a week - sport or drama - you probably need a break?

Could she also do some extra curricular like piano, rainbows, drama, sport? They learn so much from things like this.

Private school children don't do extra maths worksheets - they do huge amounts of extra curricular. They then have a versatile skill set.

She's so little at the moment. Give her time & she'll catch up.

She is,so little.
Have a nice summer
Just lots of reading
Math games counting things collecting sorting
Cooking
Board games
Educational apps
More important you make a nice anxiety free home

I dont know, some private school kids probably do. There may be less need to though as kids are generally getting more attention as fewer kids (less behaviour issues etc).
Also state varies a lot with my dc teacher having read with dc maybe twice and this year and maybe every 3-4w with the TA. For comparison some schools do daily (which seems too much) others weekly.

She’s only year1!
Why the heck are they putting them in classes by ability already! Are you sure that’s the policy or is it just your perception?
Please don’t spend all her summer getting her to catch up.
Read with her. Do a bit of phonics and a bit of number blocks and then enjoy your child.
And at 6 how does she even know she’s ‘really behind’?
I’d spend more time working on her confidence and resilience actually.

Baking, board games, singing and other music and physical activity will all help and be more fun than workbooks. You both need to enjoy your summer together.

I just want to point out that she's an August born child. So saying she's a year behind is the same as saying that if she was born a few short days later in September she would be finishing reception and where she is meant to be academically. It's not your fault or an inherent lack of ability with her - she's just very young for the year. I have a summer born daughter and she's caught up and overtaken as she's gotten older. Even if you did loads with her over lockdown 1&2 and do loads with her over summer, she might not be developmentally ready. Give it time and don't waste these precious fleeting years feeling guilty and putting pressure on yourself or her.

Have a great summer do only what is easy fun and enjoy your child. I regret worrying too much about academics when mine were young - and turning every other interaction into an educational opportunity - just chat, play, laugh and don't overthink/ worry. She has educated parents so is statistically likely to do well, and has a caring,invested mother so will be happy. Good luck!

Honestly, please, please don't set your expectations for her future based on her current 'performance'. She's soo little!

DD3 wouldn't read in year R and she went into the last term of year 1 on red book band - she didn't like getting things wrong so she just wouldn't try to decode the words. We had parents evening in year 7 this week and her Accelerated Reading teacher said that she's at the top of the standardised scale for reading and her reading age is well in excess of her age. She said 'you must like reading a lot' and DD3 confessed that she only reads enough to complete her homework.

The thing is, even if DD3 was at the lower end of the scale it really wouldn't matter. They are so much more than their academics.