Can someone please help me with School Reports?

[ilkleymoorbartat]

DS has fallen behind this year. He's Year 1 and one of the older ones. He got extra help with writing and reading (provided but the school) during the first lockdown. His reading has improved hugely, he's on Level 6 book band, but his writing is still pretty messy and he still spells phonetically with a lot of words. He rushes a lot which I think is part of his problem and I'm also worried he's loosing confidence with writing.

His teacher pulled me aside to say that she's going to put 'working towards' on his reading. Can someone please tell me whether we should be worried about this? We're thinking about getting him some extra help over the summer because we're worried he's going to fall behind even more.

@Feenie thanks! We absolutely don't encourage guessing here! But I think the writing at home leaflet has some creative ideas for making writing engaging to do together, when you have a frustrated and resistant child who wouldn't touch a writing worksheet or anything school-like at home with a 10 foot pole!

OP, the "bed" technique for b and d confusion is fab but sadly didn't work for my son so a backup method is to focus on where the letters form in the mouth. You can exp.pre with him using a mirror that when he says b, the lips begin with a straight line, just as the letter b does. But when you say the letter d, your lips are open and this resembles the circle at the start of the letter d.

Project X Alien Adventures def goes back at least to Yellow book band. The early stories are set on Earth as the children meet the cute alien, Nok, and have adventures with him as he explores our world. At orange book band they get his ship working and the story arc moves into space. Level 9 is quite far on in the series. You often find packaged sets of the later book bands at discounted prices, but all levels are available from OUP and Amazon though you tend to have to pay full price [sob] for the lower levels.

*explore
I think it's about trying different multisensory methods until you get the one that clicks.

Glad to hear it, Ceara, and agree there is good writing advice amongst the terrible reading advice. It’s a shame.

@Feenie hadn't previously looked at their reading advice as I'd found them while hunting for help getting any traction with writing with refusenik DS during lockdown, so only looked at the writing stuff. I just skimmed the reading leaflet. Oh dear... (Though it's only fair to say that DS's school's advice to parents about reading at home similarly includes encouraging guessing from pictures, from the first letter and from context, and skipping words, which all drives me completely mad but that's another rant entirely!)

With the b and d reversals I usually find that when they understand the correct letter formation this will go away.
b and d start in different places and b is a clockwise movement, d is anti - clockwise. What lots of children do in their early writing is fail to distinguish between the two and take shortcuts - the 'circles with sticks' approach so they never really learn the differences between the two letters.
It's very common in KS1.

Lego do a free monthly magazine that my DSs enjoy.