DS underacheiving wrt NC levels in SS - grrrrr

[StarlightMcKenzie]

But his language and deficit areas in social interaction have improved hugely as has is engagement and ability to learn in a group.

What to do.........

[blueShark]

lol! we must get together when they are back from their adventures :)

[StarlightMcKenzie]

Hooray! let's take turns looking after the toddlers whilst the other teaches the older kids. DS loves your DS and thinks he's hilarious.

[blueShark]

Lets go back to the 'open our own free school' star, DS is even out of school!

So sorry caught up with the thread late, DH by miracle took the boys on holiday and I have been making most of 'me' time!

BTW your DS is so lovely and compliant and intelligent!

[StarlightMcKenzie]

Thank you so much for posting everyone. Whilst it makes me miserable to hear so many have similar manifestations of the same problem, it also helps that I'm not alone with particular bad luck.

[AgnesDiPesto]

We're in same boat Trying using school for social but increasingly discovering the curriculum isn't being differentiated enough for ds. Our teacher also plans in 3 bands lower, middle, high achievers and it seems to me they throw the learning out there and hope it sticks. They do something for a week then move on and cycle back every so often to recap. I've had a child at either end. Ds1 was always ahead and got it first time and found the recapping really boring. Ds3 is below the lower level the work is pitched at for anything language based so misses out entirely. It makes you realise how ridiculous a system having 30 mixed ability kids in a class is. It's the lack of honesty about it that annoys me. If the teacher had told me she could not differentiate for ds3 I would have stepped in and done it and sent work in. But I have sat in countless meetings where they have assured me he was being planned for and months passed without any evidence of him learning anything then more assurances. I think the system works best for those in the middle. It didn't work for ds1 but I didn't complain as being bored was not as big a problem as not learning at all. Really ds3 needs an ABA unit attached to mainstream so he can do literacy in a small class of similar children and go into mainstream classes for maths, reading, IT, PE and shared playtimes. But this doesn't exist here, all units been closed on the lie mainstream can teach all children now. The SS near us are nothing like lougle's ds would be bored there. There was a lot of talk about co-locating SS and mainstream on single sites a few years ago but now it seems to have been overtaken by free school idea and expecting parents to set schools up. There isn't a big enough group of parents here to push for anything different.

[tryingtokeepintune]

Thanks for this thread.

As usual, what you do with your children is an inspiration, Star.

I decided to send ds to school (ss) to develop his social skills and am hoping to push the basic numeracy and literacy myself at home so all these strategies and examples of how to teach myself are really helpful.

This is especially so as his CT in his new school said no when I ask if we could maintain the rate of ds's reading progress (24 months) in 10 months.

However, do you think schools differentiate according to each child's ability or they just teach in groups. For example, with my dd, in ms, I know she is nowhere stretched at all. We had the CT in spring telling me to teach her the times table but from what I gathered, it is still not taught in her class at all. Does not bother me cos I figure she'll probably be stretching her negotiation skills, or something else. Is it because of our sn children's needs that we ask 'more' of the system?

[magso]

I certainly noticed my sons learning and development slowed dramatically when he started school. Could it be that group learning is harder to learn from for children with barriers such as ASD than NT children - and the systems in place to try to compensate and support are only partially able to do. However I do think that gradually he has become more able to learn in a group setting as long as he is interested or motivated.
So school need to be aware he may be dropping behind and discuss how best to support him.

[homework]

Star that will one day become someone else's history , even though your son didn't get what you wanted out of the lesson , he's taken other things away from it . Good teaching will allow for this . Even if his whole class had been there each child would have taken different thing away from the experience . That's why we all individuals , that learn , think and do things at different times . If you then follow up with clips of stuff on computer / iPad on gunpowder plot , you find that he taken more away than you actually realise , not until you redo things sometimes do you get to realise this. I love london , so much for kids to do and learn from especially during insert days when things are quieter.

[lougle]

I watched the video of Let the River Flow (Carly Simon) yesterday, and it had the Twin Towers in the background. The girls were fascinated by the story of the twin towers, so we watched the news footage of the time. It was quite a challenge to explain terrorism to the girls, without trivialising it or just saying 'bad men'. But we got there and they were soaking it up. In fact, DH had trouble getting DD1 changed for bed because she was saying 'let me just draw some more towers...'

[lougle]

See, your DS is way ahead of my DD1, Star. She'll be 8 in December.

Reading:
She can read a stage 1 ORT book with support to identify the first sound in the word (I personally think she's remembered the words. School has identified that she uses whole word recognition, although she's now making progress with phonics). She can 'read' about 25 words, although some of them are Biff, Chip, Kipper and Floppy...

Writing:
She can copy some letters. She can write her name independently (4 out of the 6 letters are straight lines). She can write some words independently, but only a handful. She still 'writes' random squiggles.

Maths:
She can rote count to 100 if she's not thinking about it, around 40 if she's being careful to make sure the numbers follow sequentially, but not consistently. She's getting the concept of time, etc., but can't tell the time. She's quite good on days of the week.

But, she can tell you what acidulated water is, tell you which ducks are the girls/boys, etc.

[StarlightMcKenzie]

I can accept that Inclusionist, but not with it being ds' needs always being ignored in favour of the group iyswim.

But you're right. We started with the intention of learning about the gunpowder plot and though we did learn a bit (me included) the learning was more about current day parliament, architecture and writing.

All good and worked on skills needed to learn. But it was supposed to be a history lesson which is his weakest subject, so to some extent, even I didn't manage to meet his needs in the way that I'd set out to and his history performance isn't as pushed along as I was planning.

[Inclusionist]

I think many parents accept that school is a group situation and their child will, at some times, have to fit in with the needs of the group.

If a child's education can be entirely, second by second, responsive to them it will be more effective, providing it is planned by a knowledgable, interested trained teacher. That level of personalisation is not really possible in a group though as one child's gain is likely to be another's loss. If your DS's whole class had been on your outing today I'm not sure they would all have been as inspired as your DS- you planned it in response to him alone.

[StarlightMcKenzie]

'I really think you should HE star because no school is ever going to be able to educate your DS like you can'

Thanks Inclusionist, but isn't that really the case for all kids/parents? I mean however good a teacher is they just can't cater to that level for each child. But I don't think I'm being unrealistic in just not expecting my ds to fall behind simply because he isn't being HE.

Honestly. I can't get the kids to go to bed. DS is writing another list of rules he'd make if he ran the country (3 weeks ago he was a complete writing avoider) and dd has just made an improved version of her identity badge as she didn't think the picture of her was clear enough, so a self-portrait with a discussion of dates and barcodes followed.

Who knew Gove could be so inspirational?

[Badvoc]

Oh! The being bale to go to places when they aren't crowded!
Book holidays whenever you want!

[StarlightMcKenzie]

We did this at half term, but had to chose a place with no kids because museums etc. would have been unbearable in the holidays and ds would not have taken anything in being too busy coping with the crowds and noise.

It was great. They have just worked together to make the Houses of Parliament out of building bricks though they were supposed to be putting on their pjs.

It's an interesting and colourful version but that isn't the point. Marbles represented people all around it. I'm very satisfied with my work and unbothered by the dire state of my house right now.

[Inclusionist]

I really think you should HE star because no school is ever going to be able to educate your DS like you can.

[Badvoc]

All of your post is why I loved HE btw.
Ds got to join a wildlife group, attend a falconry display, track deer, hold owls, went on a forest school, attended a nasa day at RAF cosford...all stuff he would never have experienced at school.
And I live in the middle of nowhere! London would have a much busier HE scene...

[Badvoc]

:)
Can I come next time star?

[StarlightMcKenzie]

You know what we did today?

We talked about the gunpowder plot. DS read a simply 4 paragraph 'story' to dd and then read out some questions for her to answer. Then we went on a train to Westminster and talked about why The Houses or Parliament were in London, and talked about other capitals.

We walked all around the outside looking at the architecture and considering where might be a good place to put a secret stash of gunpowder (yes I know), though I explained that most of the outside building was newer than the days of the plot and we looked at the bridges and spoke about whey there are so many across the Thames.

Then we went INTO the Houses of Parliament, going through loads of security where the children had their pictures taken and were given passes to wear, and we talked about why there might need to be so much security and they thought it was in case we had gunpowder in our pockets. We talked about how it was where the Politicians worked and some of the things they did.

We then had lunch in the Houses of Parliament Café and while we did so we watched Gove's debate on qualified teachers and I explained to the children that this is the politician who makes all of the rules about schools.

Then we went into the Great Hall and talked about how long ago 1000 years was and why and how the statues at the top had eroded.

Then we went to the Central Lobby and counted the sides of the walls, chandelier, windows etc. and spoke about how this is where you see the politicians on the news being interviewed often.

We then came home, got a takeaway Kebab, watched a couple of interviews in the Central Lobby on Youtube, and the kids wrote a list of 'rules' about schools that they would make if they were the politician in charge of them.

Tomorrow we are going to make a Big Ben clock and a Guy Fawkes hat, make Velcro timeline along the wall up the stairs to put all our births, the gunpowder plot and after some work on remembrance Sunday, WW2 and subsequent things we talk about, and then do some measuring of ingredients for Halloween biscuits as well as back to 10mins of handwriting practice, 10mins HFW fluency and 15mins reading.

We've been doing things like this all week and I'm loving it. No idea if I can keep it up. If I HEd I'd probably do a trip like that once a week/fortnight

The kids are upstairs now 'playing' being Prime Minister.

[Badvoc]

There is SO much you can do at home - as I am sure you are finding bochead - I really wish I had found some of the stuff I did earlier, but hey ho.
Ds came home with his assessment levels and targets for end of year 6...half of them are level 5s :)
Seemed utterly impossible just 18 months ago.

[bochead]

lougle's school sounds like the holy grail tbh.

The time factor is why I'm home edding right now tbh.

DS is year 5, secondary is looming and we NEED to address some of those deficits that are holding him back. I found when he was at school that I could totally sympathise with star's time deficit issues.

The time factor to do everything yourself is a major one. I decided unilaterally that it is more important at this stage of the game to his whole life chances, that he can read fluently than endure assembly sitting cross legged in the middle of a row of peers (he hit this "target" by the end of last year/snark).

DS is deffo spikey. Maths whizz puts him at age 4.5 for one area, yet at 9.5 for other bits of his maths. Being at home means we can work at the areas where he is over 4 years behind without insulting his intelligence by allowing him to spend a bit of time on the areas where his brain does not stop play.

However I wouldn't have dared do this until his social skills had hit a certain point. He can and does make same age friends, can join in those mainstream leisure activities that interest him without needing a glue-on adult there etc. He's 9.

Our new LA is saying he won't get into a HFA unit as he doesn't have a "full" diagnosis (clinically borderline on one aspect of the triad). I now have to decide whether it'll be worth the battle for secondary (tribunal yada, yada) or to stay as we are. Getting to VIEW the unit is a bit like asking to see the Virgin Mary's ankles, so it's a tough one.

[Badvoc]

I dont know...I have never seem any evidence of any of that at my sons school (Ms)
Your Dds SS sounds very good. How it should be.

[lougle]

Then, of course, writing a number sentence in a logical format requires hugely sophisticated speech and language skills, which our children tend to lack, which is why children at special schools can sometimes score into level 3 in a subject such as science (knowledge based) while remaining on P Levels in other subjects.

[lougle]

I think it's possible, and normal, Badvoc. Not for all the teaching hours of the day though. DD1's teacher timetables (I use the word loosely -I don't know how structured it is) 1:1 'focused activities' with each of the children in her class in the week. There are plenty of times where she doesn't get 1:1 and plenty of times where the activity she is doing hasn't be specifically tailored for her, though, I'm sure.

I think when the ratios are high (not 1:1 support, but high teacher:pupil ratio) and all the support staff are made aware of the next steps for each child (and contribute to the identification of them), then every activity can be optimised for each child.

Using DD1 as an example: They use Rainbow Road with her for her fine motor and gross motor skills. However, they can be making a collage of a tiger and the LSAs will be aware of what grip she needs to develop and will encourage her to use that skill in ripping the paper, etc.

It's such a fine balance with 'spikey' children. If you have a child (like DD1) whose innate mathematical ability is a relative strong point, but they struggle hugely to record their numerical processes, what do you focus on? Is there much point in trying to add high numbers if you can't consistently record your findings? When I say record, I mean write the number sentence in a logical format, rather than the physical skill of handwriting.

[Badvoc]

I have issues with the whole idea of giving 1-1 attention to any child in a classroom setting, ms or ss.
I mean...feasibly, it's just not possible is it!?
I gave up tbh.
I "used" school for socialisation, peer group interaction etc.
The teaching I did myself.
My ds is proof it can work, star, so don't despair! :)