Primary school classroom stars

[KathBelle]

I have 3 dc in school years 6, 5, 3.

Eldest is high achieving, driven and working beyond in all topics. She is September born and extremely confident, wins all races, competitions, gets chosen for the lead roles and is seen as very talented and capable by her teachers.

Her younger sister (in year 5) is well rounded, and gets a mix of working beyond and age related. She never excels in anything while others in her class do. She is bright and interested but not as confident as her older sibling. Youngest is too soon to know but more like middle sister.

I am curious how this tends to play out in secondary. Do the dc who are the 'classroom stars' in primary (cringe word but to mean excelling at everything, very confident) stay on track? Do the middle of the road, yet capable kids ever catch up or is it always a certain kind of child you gets all the accolades?

Dc1's confidence is growing as she is doing so well whereas dc2' confidence is taking knock after knock as the same girls in her class are excelling in all areas.

Not sure I have explained this well but if you can make sense of these early morning ramblings, how did your dc change in secondary academically and in terms of confidence compared to in primary? Or did they just follow the same trajectory?

It's difficult to break it down into specific things as, in schools that do it well, it becomes part of the general ethos rather than one-off lessons. For me, I'd say some of the core principles that can be reinforced at home are:

Attitudes:

• focusing on effort not outcome (even when the outcome is high at a time when the effort was low),
• promoting that feedback is detached and not personal. This also requires:
• the belief that nothing is ever finished and that there are always ways we can improve if we wish to address it. But as part of this:
• we don't need to be perfect, just be able to see ourselves getting better and better,
• resilience is key. It won't solve all your problems will not having it will mean you can't solve any of them,

Knowledge:

• understanding how our memories work, how information is learnt and how it is encoded,
• understanding retrieval practice and having the ability to apply strategies connected to it both in school and out of school,
• understanding the function that forgetting plays in learning and that, actually, allowing some knowledge to decay can have a net positive on how strong the encoding of that knowledge will be after retrieving it and rehearsing it.

Experiences:

• seeing yourself fail, learn and improve as a repetative cycle,
• seeing the same in others you respect (even if it has to be forced failure at first).

This link, whilst aimed at schools, may lead you to some useful information: educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/guidance-reports/metacognition

Thank you @Iamnotthe1 that's fantastic food for thought.

By solid she was probably in the top half of the class but not the top table. Her yr6 teacher was the first one to see her potential.

It all depends on whether the primary school star has learned to learn and has developed resilience and persistence, or whether she is coasting along and succeeding well despite not putting in much work.

If her identity is bound up with feeling successful without experiencing failure and picking herself up again, secondary can be hard.

As a school recognising all sorts of different strengths is important, which is what sounds like is missing here. We have a Dd in year 8 now. At primary she was a star in that she was recognised for various things at various points, she was often chosen to represent the school and was generally thought of as all round great. She wasn't the brightest there though, and had weaknesses in particular from only really having started in year 4. However despite being quiet, she had resilience in spades. When she started in year 4 however she didn't, making a mistake was the end of the world for her and she never wanted to put her hand up etc. It took a strong teacher who really saw her to persuade her that having a go, regardless of result was the important thing.

At high school she floundered a little to begin with as it is such a different experience, but is now steadily top set for everything, and plodding along nicely. In a 'normal' sized high school it is hard for any one child to get all the accolades etc.

Our second child is now in year 6, and very similar. He is very, very bright but less 'recognised', less part of the furniture than his sister was. I don't think he is allowed to coast. Be interesting to see how he gets in.

#3 has just started reception and is a different kettle of fish. Who knows!

Still not trying to pick a fight.

But in your example above the child gets the extra time to complete the writing task, but then misses out on the editing process, or other useful small sessions or non routing problem solving.

So ultimately they get more time for the core task (good) but still miss out on related learning (bad). You can't get a quart out of a pint pot as they used to say before decimalisation.

Yeah, it's the difference here between identifying what is core education and what is additional or nice to have. You can ensure that a child who requires additional time to learn and work to the same standard can have that on the core elements of their education. But this can only be done by offering other members of the class something else in that time.

My examples were a little unclear: all children will learn editing and all children will be faced with non-routine problems but some will do more than others.

It is by no means a perfect system but it is a good one that works within the restraints of mainstream education. We can't let the pursuit of the perfect get in the way of the good as then no-one benefits.

Can I also throw in friendship group and peer influence? My friend's son was average in primary but by the end of year 7 was in the top 10 children in the year, they displayed their names on a board so everyone knew. He had teachers who were passionate about their subjects which lit him up. Year 8 he did really well but year 9 saw him with a new set of friends due to option subjects. Only maths, science and English were in sets. Unfortunately he was with the we're too cool for homework and applying yourself group, lots of low level disruption in class and so every parent's evening was he could do so much better, we know he is capable and all the while his Mum didn't know how to instil a good work ethic in him. He has done well in his GCSEs considering where this could have gone, so 5s and 6s. He is now doing A levels so his Mum is hoping he will apply himself now he is no longer with that group.

Both my sons had friendship groups that had similar attitudes to learning thankfully but they were also in a different school to my friend. If they struggled with a question or part of their homework on an evening they would reach out to each other to say point me in the right direction rather than give me the answer. So attitude to learning is important too.

@mathanxiety

It all depends on whether the primary school star has learned to learn and has developed resilience and persistence, or whether she is coasting along and succeeding well despite not putting in much work.If her identity is bound up with feeling successful without experiencing failure and picking herself up again, secondary can be hard.

This is dd1, she hasn't had much opportunity to experience failure and picking herself up at school. She is sure of herself and her ability to get it right and when she doesn't know the right answer, she looses interest and moves on. I worry about year 7 but hopefully she will be able to adapt.

I think that will be a core things to deal with. Otherwise you quickly get into 'bright but lazy'. On GCSE threads there are always parents bemoaning their kids who have got buy without much effort ... until they don't.

Almost all of the pedagogic evidence shows that educational achievement in children is not linear, most of them experience peaks and troughs – for example where grammar schools exist there is no direct link between 11+ score and GCSE results 5 years later. There are a myriad of reasons for this including their home life, relationships with siblings, caring responsibilities, the amount of support they get in and out of school, quality of teaching, peer group pressures, whether they have some subjects which they are much better at than others, a preference for a certain type of exam over another type, thriving only once they can concentrate on the subjects they like best etc etc.

You get a few outliers who are exceptional throughout their schooling, of course, but some of the primary school stars will have peaked at a young age, whereas others in their cohort may not reach it until many years later.

when she doesn't know the right answer, she looses interest and moves on

Unfortunately, this suggests that she is not interested in maths/science/literature/art/history/geography as such, but only as a means to receive a praise. Has she had any genuine interest in anything? Such that the urge to find out what or how or why is really strong and she does not give up easily?

Depending on how the school is structured, this is actually possible.

My DD (Y9) has pretty severe dyslexia with a very spiky profile - Working Memory on 7th centile compared with 98th centile for VR and NVR.

We picked a massive secondary (400 kids per year) with a 3 year GCSE pathway. She was allowed to opt out of languages at the end of Y8 (at which she was supremely rubbish) and now has extra Maths, English and Science in that option block. Class is tiny (6 kids), the teachers are specialists and it is tailored to the individual child - they have to do all 3, even though some are maths geniuses etc.

DD's main issues have always been that she needs the concept of anything explained a gazillion times, and extra practice to get it stored inside her head. She's also clever, so it doesn't work well if she's put in bottom sets. Once she's understood the concept and it's secure she does extremely well...

For the OP, we have found secondary so much better than primary. DD's primary teachers all said she was clever, but she was always at the bottom of the class as she couldn't read till she was 7, struggled to write with a pen, couldn't spell and needed a much slower pace. Secondary school, a laptop and setting has meant she's now excelling in half her subjects and secure in everything else.