Yr4 not so bright seeming anymore

[Orangeinmybluelightcup]

My son has always seemed pretty bright and previously had glowing school reports, but after parents evening I'm concerned he's losing his sparkle. His reading age is still ahead but has gone backwards from 12 to 11. His handwriting remains not great and holds him back in the volume of what he writes. He's still making mistakes like capital letters. Last year he got 100% in maths assessment but now he's about where he should be. I know it's nothing awful and he's a lovely boy but I can't help worry about the levelling off in trajectories. And he's come out of school upset himself when he's not completed tests in time limits, and commented that he used to be ahead but now he isn't. I'm struggling to work out what's going on here. It could be a natural plateau. Perhaps others are working harder. Perhaps he's showing the age difference with older kids as he's still 8. Or perhaps he peaked! Just wondered if anyone else has had this with theirs?

Primary school learning is just a meaaure of how quickly kids develop different skill. It doesn't represent how clever they are.
I would encourage him develop a love of learning and to try things and not be afraid to fail. That will set him up better for secondary school where the learning is totally different and is about comprehension rather than memorising stuff.

We had this experience with DD and in Y6 she was diagnosed with dyslexia so might be worth doing some reading around this and looking into screening or testing. She came out low risk in school’s screening as she is fine with reading but off the scale bad in phonological processing and working memory so was able to ‘mask’ a lot. As the work got more detailed / lots of new vocabulary and spelling became more important her marks started dropping.

Thanks for the thought. I'm confident he's not dyslexic. He has got some particular niche deep interests and loves independently exploring these, they are science and history type interests.

Children mature at diferent rates. My son plateaued in Year 9 and then in year 10 all his teachers commented on how well he was doing.

He’s probably just levelling out. Ability isn’t an only upward trajectory.

Their brains all develop at slightly different times and maybe the other children are now catching up. It must be hard for him if he's used to coming "top". Have a read up on "growth mindset". We did a course (see below) which suggests ways to help children be kind to themselves and become ok with making mistakes/stop comparing themselves with others.
www.noisybookclub.com/

Reading age isnt very accurate so not surprising it could look like it went down.
Maths y3/4/5 gets a lot harder. It just needs practise though.
I dont think you can really know till secondary with maths though some gifted at maths will constantly be far ahead.

Dame Maggie Aderin (space scientist) is dyslexic so having niche interests doesn’t rule it out.

https://www.mnneuropsychology.com/articles/stealth_dyslexia/

Is he rushing through work because he thinks it's easy? That could be part of it too

Our eldest did this. Think she was more exposed to a good educational environment at home than many of her peers, so flew at the start of primary. Then started to plateau as she found her natural level. She did fine academically and she's doing well in life, but not the academic high flyer her doting parents imagined based on year 1!

I wonder if he got used to coasting in year 3 and hasn't realised he needs to step it up a bit in year 4. I would ask to look in detail at his books. Is he not finishing tasks for example? Is he misreading instructions? Has anyone said to him what the expectations are?

We found people didn't explain to DC what they needed to do in year 4. So the teacher would give them low marks for not providing much writing but no one had actually said "we kind of really wanted more like 2 pages than a paragraph" or "you know we expect you to finish all the questions not just three" once we explained what was expected and we checked up on it then we found DC moved a lot.

@FusionChefGeoff thanks, his sibling is dyslexic and did not show classic signs so I've had to learn quite a bit about it. I realise there's a genetic element so theoretically he could be but there are no indications at all that he's dyslexic and I'm pretty alert to it I think. Sorry I was thinking about the special interests in relation to another post, but had a spacing fail on the phone so my reply wasn't clear. I'll be showing my other child the space scientist inspo!

Some dc are more advanced than others and some develop more later. For example my ds was a late bloomer. We were very relaxed about school work and spend more time playing outside and thought he is probably just more sporty type. But around year 3/4 we had a teacher meeting, and I could not believe what they were saying. I thought they were going to tell us we need to be better at turning in the homework etc. Instead, they were saying how academic my ds was. Anyway, still really good feedback in year 7 at an academic school. But we did tell him he needs to learn good work habits as we worry for the later years. The teachers were all like keep doing what you are doing (but he does not do much at home!!).

Perhaps, ask the teacher if there is anything you should be doing at home. It sounds like your ds is feeling the pressure. He is young still and perhaps explain the work gets more challenging so you cannot always get top marks. Most important is learning what you can improve etc. Is he at a very academic school? If yes, many parents tutor out of school or give their dc extra work (I know many that are/were at prep schools). Esp if they are doing the 11+

DC really do develop at different rates. My DD, who struggled all through primary academically ended up with significantly better exam grades than her older brother, who appeared really bright in KS1/2. Your DS is still very young and does seem to be worried about it, you could encourage his interests and try to make it fun.