What questions to ask at parents evening for a yr 3 child.

[jb707]

Hi, my dd is at prep school. She is very quite and shy. If i ask the teacher what dds reading age is should the teacher know. Also what else can i ask.

Is she happy? That would be all I would want to know really. Too much emphasis on academic stuff at these evenings IMO.

They will probably tell you how she is doing academically, but I always also ask how she is doing socially, physically (ie PE) and emotionally in their opinion.

I find the questions "is there anything she needs extra help on at home"/" is there anything she needs to practise" can be useful , as they show the teacher that you are not going to be annoyed if your DD is not perfect. Also they will tell you the small things you can practise, eg I was told that DD might want to try smaller handwriting. Also agree the social questions are very important.

I think what they tell you depends on the child. You say she is quiet and shy so hopefully they will talk about how she is settling in first to reassure you.

My dd is the same and there were concerns how she would get on in Yr3 with lots of differnt teachers - this was the first thing they reassured me about and actually she loves it!

Not sure that 'reading age' has any real relevance in Yr3 does it - they are pretty much all reading 'proper' books by now aren't they? Unless she reads lots they will probably suggest she broadens her range of books to increase her vocabulary - standard comment at dd's school

Our school are doing some sort of CAT? assessment and we will get the results at the end of term so maybe you could ask if they do that? I think it looks at how they are performing reletive to their potential and picks up issues early.

Another possibility is to see what topics they are doing next term so you can be aware and work with her eg we knew dd would do the Romans so spent some time at the Roman museum in Cirencester but avoided Caerleon as the teacher said they would go there on a trip

Spelling and grammar seems to be a hot topic too - maybe see if there are any trends she needs to work on that you can help with.

Another very important thing our school did is explain how they teach maths - I was doing vertical addition with dd (which her logicalmind latched onto straight away) but they do much more mental arithmatic and strategies so it helped to know the concepts so we could 'work thro sums' too to reinforce them

IME the 10 mins goes so fast
that is really time to have a general chat and if thre are any major issues go back another time.

Plenty of children in yr3 won't be reading well, yet.

hiya, they may know the reading age range depending on the type of reading assessments the school does. The assessments I use start at a reading age of 7yrs and go up by 6 month intervals, so provided my pupils were reading at a 7 year old level or higher, I could give them their "reading age" according to a formal assessment result. I find, speaking as a parent, asking about any specific activities to do at home to be a good question to ask, and speaking with my teacher hat on, I too like being asked that question because it tells me that the parent wants to take a vested interest in their childs education, and cares about if they are struggling with a certain area and could use more practise.

ask what feedback your daughter gets on her work, be specific about different subjects too, especially the ones you feel she is weak in. Check that she does get INDIVIDUAL feedback with meaningful comments in her books and comments from teacher in class. I find sometimes schools can give too much class feedback that is not relevant to an individual. If your daughter is shy this is especially important.

Ask if the teachers have any targets for your daughter, and what your daughters expected progress for this year should be - ask about sublevels
progress eg 2b to 3c expected by end of year.

Then if needed make another appointment if you have run out of time. I usually need to cos 10 mins of generalised bumpf is not helpful.