School days – parents evening and NSPCC talk
What with last weekend being a birthday weekend, I totally forgot to share school days for that week. There was quite a bit going on last week, although N seemed relaxed about it all.
Parents evening
I always hope there’s no surprises at parents evening and again there wasn’t. With the school doing an open morning each half term for parents to go in, look at books and have a quick chat with the teacher, you tend to know how they’re getting on which is good. And parents evening just tops that up, including any official things that need mentioning.
This was the first parents evening with this teacher as last year N straddled the 2 classes, so we saw the Class 1 teacher. As I’d hoped, N is making good progress, in particular with his writing. His maths is going well – although that’s not a surprise as it’s always been his stronger area (I’m just never too sure whether his confidence over doing maths is that accurate – it appears it is which is good).
His reading’s at the right level for his age, although he should be able to achieve more – it might help if I could get him to read more regularly than 4 nights a week, and if he would also do a bit of reading of his own books and not just school reading books.
The one area we need to work on is his spellings. While he (usually) does well in his weekly spelling test, he doesn’t remember them after the week is out, and he certainly doesn’t relate the rules to any writing he does. I’m going to try and think of ways to keep him aware and seeing the spellings he’s done without having to keep testing. Maybe having a massive poster in his room that he can add examples of his weekly spellings to in the hope that seeing them regularly might help him recall them better.
NSPCC talk
The NSPCC go round school and do a Speak Out Stay Safe talk, introducing the underwear rule to the children. I’ve talked to N before about keeping privates private, but it’s good that all the children get the talk at the same time. Although N didn’t seem to remember much about it other than the Childline number which similarly we’ve talked about before. Mostly in a joking way because my brother always used to say he’d ring Childline when he wasn’t allowed to do something.
My only concern is that whenever N has been clumsy and knocked himself (happened 3 times last week!) or when he and the OH have been mucking about and someone’s ended up crying because they’ve got hurt, the OH has always made some comment about ‘oh, has mum hurt you’ and ‘ring Childline’. I’m just hoping N realises that he can’t go reporting off things that aren’t actually true. The OH needs to stop saying stuff like that and putting the blame for something on someone else when they had nothing to do with it. And realise that sometimes children can’t tell when people are just being stupid or joking.
At least N knows that if he’s got a problem he’s got a lot of options for people to talk to in and out of the family.
Birthday cheers
Last week was N’s birthday week at school, and each Friday assembly, any child with a birthday stands at the front and the school sing happy birthday to them all and clap the total years. Last week it was just 2 of them (before the summer holidays, it can go on a long time with all the children with holiday birthdays!). He was pretty chuffed it was his turn, and having his birthday card from the school topped it off too.
What’s been going on with school recently with your children?