Teacher has nothing to say about my dd at parents evening

[bissscofff]

Dd attends a local primary school and is currently in year 5. She is greater depth in all subjects, gets on well with friends and classmates and never gets into trouble (sorry not meant to boast, but relevant to the rest of my post). She is happy at school and we've never been pushy parents or asked school to do anything extra with our dd.

We had our second online parents evening last week and the teacher explained what they'd been doing in class and the first few minutes were spent explaining she's doing fine. We asked them if she seems happy with other kids, if she's participating well in class, and the general things to which they replied "yes" without expanding on any of them. We then asked if there's anything she could be working on at home they shrugged their shoulders and replied with a one word "no". We had 4 minutes to spare until the end of the consultation but they decided to end the meeting.

I realise there are other pupils that need the teacher's attention and care more than perhaps dd does, but it just seemed like they didn't know her at all. Surely there is something she can work on as she's not a perfect child. No one is.

Has anyone experienced this, or if there are teachers out there I'd love to know if this is normal.

Even within greater depth there will be strengths and weaknesses- areas where a child is really flourishing and areas where they’re scraping it. Then there will be different things re social and soft skills.

A number of the pupils at my year who went on to become teachers were their own teachers' biggest nightmare back in the day!

That was me! Poacher turned gamekeeper definitely! It did mean there was little that pupils could do that I hadn't already done

Hmmm. Even if she's a great student, no student is perfect. I would've especially been surprised that the teacher had said no about doing any additional work at home. I'm a year 1 TA and private tutor and within a few weeks with a child and observing their work and behaviour I could very easily wing a parents evening meeting about any of them. It sounds like your child is great and causes no concern but the teacher was just tired and wanted to get off the call. Parents evenings are tough on teachers, especially if it was one of the later ones, they could've just had a conversation with the very rude parent of a child they had raised concerns about.
Nevertheless, teachers should easily be able to analyse a child's work and know where they can improve.

Spelling is a big one that you could work on very easily at home and it has a big effect on their confidence. For my tutoring sessions, I ask children to keep a running list of all the words they've spelt wrong in their work. They all have a little spelling notebook they take to school. They bring the words to me during our sessions and I give them weekly spelling tests based off these words. We then tick them off the running list once they've been spelt correctly. The children then use the notebook as a mini dictionary at school. If she's great at spelling, perhaps you could work on synonyms with her and widening her vocabulary. My mum used to go through the dictionary with me as a child. I still remember learning what 'adjacent' meant when I was about 6.

It sounds like you need to work on your question style - everything you asked was a closed questions and invites a single word answer. Look up open ended questions and see how reframing them stops the other person being monosyllabic - so instead of "is she's participating well in class" you ask "can you tell me how she participates in class" and hone in on a detail for the "is there anything we can do to help" with "what one thing could we do to help support her at home" and if it's still vague, you can push for more details "what does this look like in practise" or "can you expand on this" . These are all classic interview techniques and really helpful to learn generally.

I'd follow up with an email and say you've realised you didn't come away with a full picture of her progress (or something similar) and then ask a few specific open questions. If you're struggling you can always tap in some basic background and your desired outcome into AI and you'll get a draft you can work from.

It sounds like she's doing well so no cause for concern but that doesn't mean you don't want to know some detail or help support/progress at home!