DD year 3 - end of yr report - working towards expected level

[Jonsa]

DD’s end of year report had her ‘working towards the expected standard’ for maths and English, although she was working at the expected standard for reading.

It came as a complete shock, as I thought we were on track. The school have never raised any concerns directly to us or during the parents evenings. There has never been any mention of getting additional support or attending the after school catch up clubs that the school run.

They send the report on Thursday and it was too late to speak to her teacher, although I did try.

I am slightly annoyed and worried about what I should do. She was very ill, and off school for a month, in November, so that might be a factor.

I don’t want to stress her out. Any suggestions? Thanks

She's so young, don't worry. One of mine was like that all through Primary and now has a PHD

I think it's reasonable to feel annoyed - there shouldn't be surprises at parents' evening, particularly finding out for the first time at the end of the year that your child isn't meeting year-group expectations.
I'd be asking them for what support is in place and what specific gaps you can work on at home. Explain that you want to be supportive so being kept up to speed with their progress is helpful.

Sorry meant to say there shouldn't be any big surprises in end of year report!

I wouldn't worry about it, they set the bar very high.

Your dd is v young and this report honestly doesn't mean anything.

It might have just gone off the Summer assessments- she may have just missed WA by a couple of points despite working at WA level throughout the year.
It's a shame you didn't get chance to speak to the teacher for more details.

Thanks all, very comforting to read. I have purchased a few books for her to read over the summer, and spend sometime going through her Maths work.

I would just read to her to encourage an interest in books. Playing games like shops and taking food orders also helps later with counting. Keeping it fun and not forced.

Do following things:
Read Theory ( free) every day 2 stories with answers

Times Table Rockstar. 20 min per day

You can try Mathletics

I believe that this is the best time to catch up with the program.

My son had all Primary " working towards expected" at Art and PE and I don't care at all. Surely he will not be an artist

Join the library. They usually have a summer reading challenge. Get her to write shopping lists etc or buy her a nice notebook and get her writing stories.
Play board games that involve dice so she gets used to adding up in her head quickly.
I wouldn't be worrying but i would be doing things to help her along.

For Y3 maths, you need to be able to do formal methods for addition, subtraction and multiplication, know your 3, 4 and 8 times tables and division facts, and be able to do a few things with fractions. If you can do those, you're most of the way there so that's what I would concentrate on. EGPS is largely word classes (but a lot of them - common nouns, proper nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and pronouns) but the spelling element is quiet hard to master if it doesn't come easily to you. The school has handled it badly but I'd just bring it up with the new teacher around the beginning of October. Say you were a bit shocked last year and want to know what your child needs to be on track.

Im sure she’s capable of catching up if she has missed a whole month of school it’s bound to have had an impact.

Definitely don’t make a big thing of it or let her worry about it - but do keep up the summer learning.

Tbh while I get people saying “make it fun” so your dd doesn’t switch off, and I’m fully in favour of contextual learning, some things just have to be learned. For my dd it was all the exception spellings - she was utterly hopeless and the only way to learn was to slowly practice.

As much reading as possible , definitely makes a vast difference. Not all fiction - can be recipes or instruction manuals or anything

We found a lovely maths tutor for ours through primary. We are a wordy family we fly at English / humanities / languages but struggle with maths! Dd1 got 8s and 9s for all
her gcse but 7 at maths. Dd2 year 3 maths report way worse than yours and she’s pulling in 7 at maths for gcse mocks. So don’t panic it’s a long road!

Do you have a local library? They often run holiday reading challenges which are very child friendly, and free! Might be worth checking it out, her reading sounds as though it is on track, but reading is a great way to improve vocabulary which is also a way of supporting writing skills.

God we played that interminable fucking bus stop game - yes as an adult it can make you feel quite suicidal but is quite useful for helping them envision numbers.

For maths I would concentrate on familiarity with numbers and the way they work.

Counting in 2s, 5s and tens.

knowing which numbers add together to make totals up to 10 ( number bonds). She might still need to see this visually so use cubes, Lego bricks, smarties etc. Start with 5s. Show her five smarties, ask he to close her eyes, cover two of the smarties, how many have you covered. When she can do this with 5 then increase the number of smarties.

counting backwards from 10, from twenty.

counting over the ten numbers ( so knowing that 19 is followed by 20, 21,22 . Twenty nine is followed by 30 , 31, 32 etc)

Look for shapes in the environment, and at home, find triangles, rectangles , squares , circles, what is special about each shape?

One thing that is really important is to ask her to talk about the way she is thinking about maths problems and solutions, it really helps to fix concepts in childrens minds if they articulate their thinking out loud.

These are lovely ideas for early maths and ensuring a child has good foundations before they get too far beyond that. I think it's important to be clear what your child is struggling with though, as it's possible to have those basics but not fully understood Y3 concepts. Most of the ideas in this post are Y1 level maths. Yes you need to be able to count in 2s, 5s and 10s but the Y3 expectation is 3s, 4s and 8s, which might simply be down to a lack of practice.

My dd had a shock below expected year 2, no indication at parents evening. But got bsck on track to expected in year 3 with no drama. Teacher assessments can be subjective or perhaps she's had a bit of a not great maths partner this year. Focus on the x tables for y4, and she'll be fine next year.

Teacher assessments are not 'subjective'. Each assessment in Maths & Reading comprehension gets a raw score and a standardised score. Nothing subjective at all,

The term teacher assessment means taking evidence from books as well as using other tools like tests if they want (there is no obligation to use them). There is no standardised test for years outside SATs year groups; schools just buy in tests from companies like Rising Stars. The new curriculum was meant to be Life after Levels and part of that was that although there are objectives for each year group, there's technically no official standard to reach (previously children worked through levels like 4a, 5c etc which were nationally recognised).

The thing is having 3 levels is a blunt way of telling you how your child is getting on. She could have just missed 'working at' marginally.

And remember that kids development isn't linear. Your daughter may be excelling in other areas where her peers aren't yet. She may find her academic mojo next year, at senior school, or even later.

I'd just make sure that at home you foster a joy for learning. Lots of books, generally engaging her in numbers and discussing things. Puzzles, like sodoku, crosswords etc are fantastic for learning without feeling like learning. Sure, the times tables need to be learned and you can do that with her too.

I'm a fan of first news, the kids newspaper. Lots of current affairs to discuss, puzzle pages, all sorts.

But honestly I wouldn't force anything. She's what, 7/8? Remember that in plenty of countries she'd have only started school recently.

Make sure she gets to do the stuff she loves and gets to be a kid. The rest will follow.