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.........

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.

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.

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.

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...'

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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!

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.

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