What's the typical level for Reception education?

[Adriana87]

Hi all
My son just started school and is currently doing settling in days. The teacher mentioned to myself and other parents some very basic achievements such as: being able to count to 20, recognise shapes and pronounce the alphabet phonetically.

My son turned 4 in April and has a speech delay but can read an entire book (basic words of course) and do addition and subtraction. He also recognises all numbers up to 1,000.

I was taken a little back as I thought they would be teaching stuff a bit more advance. Am I wrong?

Actually, I have a question for anyone who feels kind enough to answer it….

In reception, should children be bringing home reading books that they need help with?

When dd2 (now aged 17) was in reception a parent moved their child to another school because they said that school should only send books home that a child needs help with.

@Itsnotover

Actually, I have a question for anyone who feels kind enough to answer it….

In reception, should children be bringing home reading books that they need help with?

When dd2 (now aged 17) was in reception a parent moved their child to another school because they said that school should only send books home that a child needs help with.

No, books must be well matched to the taught phonic sounds. If a child needs help to read it, this is not a well matched book.

The child should be quite fluently practicing what they already know.

We like to offer children three books at a time: one which they can read confidently and have selected themselves; one which reflects current learning (ai for example) and will offer gentle but achievable challenge; and another which is aspirational, chosen for interest and to be shared with an adult taking on the lead role.

My four year old just started reception, she can write her name, recognise her own name, other children’s names and some letters, count to 20 and do very simple addition, and she can recite her favourite books (almost) word for word. Her pre-school rated her as average for everything.

From our point of view what is important is she is happy and confident going to school and looks forward to each day, she can listen to the teacher and respond appropriately, play nicely with other children and make friends and she eats well.

@RaskolnikovsGarret

There were three girls in DD1’s class who were free readers - Roald Dahl standard - with comprehension too. It happens. Others take longer. Children develop at different rates, and it means nothing in the end. I’m a bit puzzled by posters denying it ever happens despite people’s lived experience to the contrary.

I know it happens - I was a free reader by the time I started school (not dickens though, I was 8 or 9 before I got to that!) I'm not sure anyone has denied it, but it is unusual and not typical of reception aged DC. Which is what the OP asked

Yes, of course some children can read whole books when they start in Reception. Of course some children recognise larger numbers and some can do simple arithmetic. It isn't common, but it does happen.

Some children are precocious learners - they just learnt earlier and the others catch them up. I remember one boy who chose to spend most of his time in Reception playing in the construction and art type areas or in the mud outside. He needed to make friends and be a child because he had been hothoused by his parents on the academic side and hadn't had much experience in other parts of being a child.

I remember another child whose mum (like you, OP) just hadn't realised other 4 year olds couldn't do what her son did naturally. He was a single child of older parents who had not been to nursery. He remained a very advanced learner through school, but did struggle early on with maths that didn't have a clear answer, and we struggled to find books for him which he could understand at an emotional level. He had a wide vocabulary but didn't understand the characters' motivations or the allusions in books he could decode easily but were aimed at 10+year olds. He just hadn't lived enough.

I can think of a third boy who was hyperlexic and could do almost any calculation in his head. He had no understanding or apparent engagement with what he read, and could not explain methods for his mental arithmetic or apply it to real life problems. He was referred, and diagnosed with autism by the end of KS1.

Anyway OP, Google EYFS, and see the curriculum. Google Early Learning Goals and see the end of Reception expectations for most children.

Some children are precocious learners - they just learnt earlier and the others catch them up.

I don't agree that everyone levels off. Not all kids are going to get straight A**s or go to Oxbridge.

Genuinely interested.

What sort of basic words? There are lists of first 100 and second higher frequency words etc. How many of those can he read? With what fluency does he read? Can he sound out consonant blends like br and fl?

Can he recognise and perhaps write out digraphs like /oa/ and /igh/ to complete a word?

Is he able to make sentences like x is 3 more than 15? 2 less than 18 is X? Can he count up in 5s and 10s?

These are some of the goals his teacher will have for him but the range of ability is terribly wide and very able children can be streets ahead of others.

There are plenty of gifted 4 year olds who very definitely DO function far ahead of the curve. It is silly to deny this just because you haven’t personally met one!

Of course there are - but you know that counts as ‘gifted’. OP seemed to think that could be the norm. Of course it isn’t. Learning the alphabet phonetically and being able to count to 20 and apply their understanding of that is plenty for most four year olds to be getting on with.

@Itsnotover
I didn't say everyone levels off.
I said SOME childrèn.
The second example I give is of a child who was a precocious learner but remained advanced throughout school.
I was giving examples to counteract those PP saying no children could read on entry to school. One example is the child who gains those skills early, but others catch up.
One example.

I could read fluently by 4. Was utterly and totally average by 11 and got c grades in my A Levels. It means nothing at all I'm afraid.

@Scarby9 ah ok, I understand.

In our family there's a lot of autism. With my dd I sometimes think it could be another presentation as she has a real thing for numbers and letters. Time will tell I guess...

The EYFS curriculum is easily available if you look it up. Along with the national curriculum for the next several years of your child’s education.
All state schools follow this and you can clearly see the average expectations for each year group and the things your child will be expected to learn at each stage.
Your child has been at school for 2 weeks maybe?? Please give his teacher a chance to asses him and get to know his strengths and weaknesses.
If he can truly do all the things you say his teacher will very quickly find that out.
You say your surprised by what the expectations for the age range are - out of our new intake of 15 four year olds only 2 can independently write their own name and half of them can’t recognise numbers above 5.
Your child is unusual.

I love these thread
My sons teachers were more worried about what they could do for themselves at that age such as getting changed for PE (although they wear their kit to school now due to covid) and going to the toilet independently.

My son is 6 soon and has been able to read and count for ages. He goes to a welsh school where they learn words phonetically and it helped him learn To read English as well without being taught. He has an autistic brother who has always been obsessed with numbers. He knows a lot about the solar system and the human body as well as insects because it's stuff he's interested it. In his end of reception report his teacher wrote that he can count and recognise numbers up to 20. She didn't know or probably care that he could count up to 1000, because he doesn't need to at that age. All she knows is that he is where he should be and that's fine.

@RoundTheTwister

Fuck me, my daughter must be thick as shit or I'm a crap parent from reading some of these replies

I'm glad someone else has said what I was thinking 🤣 Seriously though, my daughter has just started school and is nowhere near reading/writing etc, but she is happy going to school, and the progress I've seen her make in her social development just in the past couple of weeks fills me with pride ☺️ The rest will come in time.

Children are ready to learn at different ages. I have four dc and they've gone through p1 (reception)as the top, middle or bottom. It does even out when they are a bit older. Generally if you want to do extra enrichment activities at home it's fine. Seems a bit pointless doing stage 2 reading books but we just whizz through and choose something else. I quite like running off on a tangent so we might do lots of stuff on whatever they've seen or read do a big art project to give them a chance to learn the curriculum with their peers.

@IHateCoronavirus

Early years teacher here 🙋‍♀️ The very best part about teaching FS 1&2 is having the freedom to scaffold a child’s play into a learning experience without them even realising. What this means is that we are constantly differentiating in the moment with each child. Teaching and learning objectives are driven by the child’s current interests, schema and level of development.

We could watch a child counting out three teddies in a bed. We might ask one child to show us three on their fingers. We might ask another to show us the corresponding numeral on a number fan. Another child might be asked to write the number three and predict what will happen if we take another away. That child’s friend might be asked how many more bears they would need to make ten bears, and the bright spark eagerly watching on from the sand tray might be able to tell me what would happen if I keep adding in three’s. Same observation different outcomes.

Regardless of a child’s level moments like this are very play based. The teacher/TA will be verbalising their thought processes out loud to encourage independent exploration and a thirst for learning.

Your child will be getting a deeper and wider learning experience than they would if they were learning in a linear fashion.

Obviously some schools are better than others, you would do well to pick one with an SLT who understand EYFS and don’t try to foist restrictive schemes of work on them which reduce quality child led learning opportunities. Pathways to Write is one such travesty.

Also, whilst having the pleasure of teaching a great many wonderful children, some of whom were little geniuses. The first question I always want answering when I hear “x can read fluently and knows all of their numbers up to 10,002” is “how are their social, emotional and communicative skills?”

This is a great post.

My child (Y1 age 5) now can do a lot of the things people are saying. She's been reading well since age 4, with good comprehension and now reads small chapter books (though we too have had to put down some of the Roald Dahls, we started George's Marvellous Medicine and it scared her!). She writes well, spells correctly rather than phonetically which is more usual at age 5 most of the time. Her writing and maths have just been assessed and her teacher has said she's working at around a year ahead. Academically she is quite advanced. Memory of an elephant too, she forgets nothing which obviously can be beneficial in learning at school.

She's also diagnosed autistic and requires full time 1-1 support at all times in school. She can do all of these clever things, but she can't understand how to spark up a conversation with the child sitting next to her without saying something that the other child considers weird, or just go and join in with other children at break time. Despite her maths skills, put a timer on her or do 'quick fire' sums like they do and she cannot do it - no processing time you see. Do PE in a echoey hall with lots of conflicting and distracting noise? Deal with another child who has unpredictable behaviour? Nope. Change a routine unexpectedly? Definitely not.

There are advanced children out there and not all of them have ASD of course, but when a child is doing quite unusual things learning wise at a very young age I would also be looking closely at how they play and interact with their peers, react to change, deal with transitions. Because if they don't know how to manage these things or aren't easily able to learn them then that's just as much of an issue as not being able to read well at 4/5 years old.

Most children in Reception will be working on numbers 0-20, recognising shapes, learning phonics sounds and sounding out simple words. Some (usually the older ones) might start Reception already doing those things.

1 or 2 might start Reception already reading simple books.

Some start Reception not doing any of that stuff.

When my oldest started reception he could read, count to 100 and beyond, knew all his colours and his alphabet. The teacher saw he could do this and worked with him and gave him work that would challenge him and keep him working towards year one. When he reached year one the teacher gave him harder work which he breezed though.

@Thesearmsofmine same - I didn't "learn" to read. My mum read to me constantly from being a baby and she said I just started reading by myself
She lost friends over it who accused her of hot housing me, and I remember crying in school she around 5 because the teacher said it was impossible for me to have read the book and I needed to take it back and read it properly
I've always speed read too and been sick of hearing people ask if I'm actually reading it. Takes me about 1hr to read a standard size chick lit type paperback

@KidneyBeans

What do you mean by recognise numbers up to 1000 and read a book? It's very unlikely by the age of 4 that he has a conceptual understanding of those things, and is simply repeating things back to you. I know many youngsters who can 'read' familiar stories - they've simply learned them by heart and aren't actually reading at all

As in, if I show him a number, 569 for example, he'll say exactly what it is. He knows what 1,000 is but I've never heard him say 1,569 so that's why I say he knows up to 1,000.

In terms of reading, he'll read out words phonetically and will understand the words he recognises. I can type out an instruction on the computer (open the door) and he'll read and do it. We read those Biff and Chipper books which came from a recommendation on this forum.

Gosh he is ahead.

@PricklesTheHedgehog

I'm a teacher (older than reception) and have seen parents say their child can add and subtract three and four digit numbers, but actually they cannot.

If the parent writes a sum fir the child using columns, for example, 426 - 113, the child can get to the answer.

But the same child cannot reliably say which of the two numbers is larger and by how much, they cannot tell you how what needs to be added to 3 to get to 6, they cannot set out the sum themselves unless both top and bottom numbers have the same amount of digits.

In other words, they have been taught a party trick.

The good teacher will not want to offer extension activities, but quite the opposite. Instead they we'll need to go back a few stages to learn the fundamental concepts of numeracy.

My son has an abacus and you can tell him to add any 2,3,4 etc set of numbers and he'll add it up and tell you the answer. He'll also replicate sums using other objects too. For example, he can tell you what 6+5 is using his abacus, marbles, blocks or straight from his head (he watches a lot of Numberblocks).

He's been assessed twice and both times have come back as no but he's still being monitored. Speech delay, certain mannerisms, short attention span and hyperactivity suggest he probably is on the spectrum.

@cloudacious

Genuinely interested.

What sort of basic words? There are lists of first 100 and second higher frequency words etc. How many of those can he read? With what fluency does he read? Can he sound out consonant blends like br and fl?

Can he recognise and perhaps write out digraphs like /oa/ and /igh/ to complete a word?

Is he able to make sentences like x is 3 more than 15? 2 less than 18 is X? Can he count up in 5s and 10s?

These are some of the goals his teacher will have for him but the range of ability is terribly wide and very able children can be streets ahead of others.

Level 2 and 3 of those Oxford books. Admittedly, his actual understanding of them will be limited depending on the book, pictures etc. His writing is behind as it's something he doesn't have the patience for. Because of Alphablocks, he'll know how to pronounce his "igh" and such. In terms of phonetic reading, he'll know what "tap" is and you can replace the t with r, v, or whatever letter and he'll pronounce it correctly. He'll do that with every word. He'll read it, or at least try, phonetically.

Specifically, he won't say x is bigger than y but I haven't really taught him that. If he wants a sweet, ill give him one and he'll saying something like "2 more" and he'll expect you give him the extra two or he'll ask again or for the additional 1.