DD on track rather than greater depth

[Thedownstream]

Just had Parents Evening for DD who is in Year 5. Early on in her school life she was greater depth in Reading, Maths and Science but since the middle of year 2 she has dropped back and now is always meeting age related expectations for the core subjects and never anything more. She gets greater depth consistently in PE, Computing, PHSE and sometimes Geography, but they’re not the core subjects.

EY and Year 1 for her were the years she missed out on schooling due to Covid, and I really tried hard with the homeschooling despite her reluctance. Two younger siblings later and I admit I’ve taken the eye of the ball and DH never had his eye on it, and we’ve not done the readings or spellings with her we should have done, and whilst she’s done her homework every week it’s been a case of let her hand in whatever even if it’s taken her 5 minutes. I feel like we’ve failed her and she should be achieving more. She’s bright (I think) but very slapdash and very competitive. Every teacher has fed back that she needs to take more care with her work and not just rush to finish first. Same feedback tonight.

DH and I both work and DD plays sport 4 nights per week, plus she has two younger siblings that need attention. We barely have enough time to feed them with rushing around let alone anything else!

So what would you focus on at home to help her reach her potential? We’ve started enforcing reading for 20 minutes each morning and I was thinking of getting her to practice spellings then too. But is there anything else we can do with such limited time?

I want her to do as well in her SATS next year as possible. Our local secondary isn’t great behaviour wise if you’re not in top sets. I feel we owe it to her to help her get the best results she can to set her up well for secondary. I don’t think a tutor for SATS is the answer. I don’t want her to panic under any pressure, but perhaps a tutor for English not linked to SATS (English is definitely weaker than Maths)?

My replies relate to letting a child be a child. If that bothers you then maybe ask yourself why.

I've told you what 'bothered' me already. @DieStrassensindimmernass

Yes, I inow you have, and as already I said that's your issue.

Ha! Are you my husband….? He has started to suggest she may have ADHD. Out of the three of my kids I have always felt she is the least likely to be neurodivergent however I am now wondering.

I watched her at football the other week and whilst the coach is explaining everything she’s fidgeting, looking around, doing keepy ups and he’s explaining some really complicated drills and I’m thinking she can’t possibly be following this, but then she does it all perfectly. I then speak to her the next week about “active listening” and making sure she looks like she’s listening as well as actually listening. She does this the next week and she’s doesn’t follow anything and hasn’t a clue what she needs to do.

I do think though that an ADHD diagnosis for her would “cheapen” the diagnosis of people who are really affected.

No they don’t but this would be amazing!

Thank you. I will do all of this.

Her teacher last year showed us how the “grading” is calculated and it was much more scientific than I realised, and I always hadn’t realised she had to have achieved absolutely everything at a level to be considered to be meeting it. I hadn’t thought about asking for a copy of this and seeing what the gaps are.

Apparently she is very nearly there in maths so I plan to focus on the reading and comprehension as that’s clearly so important for everything else.

I think mine is similar although perhaps less advanced with the knowledge of facts. She too is one of the children taken out of class to help others as in the words of her teacher “she can afford the time out and will catch up”. I’m not sure quite how I feel about this but she does not want to stop doing it. She has one child who she helps calm down after break for 10 minutes per day and has just been allocated another child to read with for 15 minutes each day 🤷🏻‍♀️.

They've basically told you your child is normal - sounds good to me!

What's the worry? What do you think is going to happen to her if you are not pumping her with spellings and maths at home and even in the car!? What disaster is going to befall her?

Just enjoy doing stuff with her at home - read to her, paint, make things, play board games/cards. Too much blooming school stuff when she should be enjoying family time. She is a child only once - and she is normal - hooray!

Mine was greater depth all through primary. We never did anything extra with her and she had nothing but downtime at home. We did not bother with spellings or times tables or maths as she seemed to be doing fine without extra input. But she chose to spend quite a lot of her completely self-directed downtime reading and writing stories and poems because that was what was fun to her. Quite a lot of the time she would do this kind of thing in preference to watching TV etc. I just let her get on with it and read all the stories she wrote and told her I loved them etc.

Sounds like your daughter is also doing what is fun to her out of school (her sport) and is excelling in that. People will naturally get better at things they spend a lot of time on.

If her being greater depth at academic things at school is important to you, then she will need to spend more time on it. Is it important to her to be good at schoolwork? It sounds like she is doing well if she is meeting all expectations, and maybe that is enough for her right now? Things may change in the future if sport becomes less important to her and other things get more important.

This, word for word.

What I have realised is there is a lot of secret tutoring going on a primary school and that it’s very easy to fly under the radar in a class of 30. My daughter was always ahead in infants and then I took my foot off a little bit in year 3 focusing much more on extra circular. It’s clear there are some gaps in year 4 but frequent bursts of 1:1 is doing wonders. We fit tables in on the walk to school and 10 minutes a day got them all cracked in 6 weeks. I had a post on here about terrible spelling and whether my daughter might be dyslexic or not. Even one week in of focused time seems to be helping and that’ll be our focus for the rest of the year. Little and often and 1:1 seems to make such a difference.

I still don't fully understand your worry about this, since you have a well rounded kid that is doing well academically and is sporty as well.

For a bit of reassurance, DD was also GD when little, then coasted at Expected for most subjects. She probably could have been GD in English in y5 as her only target was to develop her own style of writing and flair.

She's a good reader , but hates it so we didn't push too much.

Then y6 came around, she had her SATS, did great and ended up with GD for most subjects at the end of the year including English and Maths.

All irrelevant in y7 where she had to do their tests in order to be set and they don't even set for everything. Just Maths, PE and French so far , and she's in y8.

This is a very common occurrence.

It’s completely unrealistic to expect a child that does all of this sport to also be achieving greater depth at school. It’s too much. I think you have to pick a aside. My kids were both sporty and academic both in grammar schools but you have to give them a balance and take the time out to help them.

with respect to reading it’s good to read with her too not just listen to her.