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School days – star of the week and parents evening

I love the approach to the end of term and the end of the school year. You get to see how the children have progressed, and get an idea of how they’ll be getting on as they move into the next class. It’s been another great week for N, so here’s this week’s school days.

Star of the week

N doesn’t often get star or learner of the week certificates even when he’s been a VIP regularly. But this Friday he came home with the star of the week certificate. For always being appreciative. I’m not sure he knew exactly what he done to come for that reason, but he was really happy to get the certificate at the same time as his best friend got learner of the week.

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Parents evening

I love parents evening especially when he’s just had a good report. It feels good when you hear great things about your child.

As soon as I walked in, the teacher said you won’t believe what I’m about to tell you. This year they had key stage 2 SATs and we had been worried about N’s reading comprehension papers. Not because we thought he couldn’t do them, but because during practice papers, he just didn’t read the comprehension and therefore got shocking marks. It turns out that when he reads the papers, he can do really well. So well, his reading results smashed his maths paper out of the park. And maths is meant to be his strength. He still got a good score in his maths papers but the reading one was an insanely high score.

The usual annual assessment looking at their work over the year and seeing how they progressed, also saw N come out really well. He’s worked really hard on his reading this year, and the teacher’s put him through extra reading booster sessions. They do these for specific subjects for children who could do with the extra practice. So he’s been reading to someone 3-4 times a week.

He’s at the expected level for all of his subjects which I’m so chuffed about. It shows just how much he’s progressed this year as the work has got harder. With his reading he was on of the upper end of expected and would have been higher, if only he could get a bit more fluency with his reading. A good result all round.

Next year they”ll be working on his spelling. While he can get top marks easily on spelling tests, it’s the lack of translation into his writing that holds him back. So he may do some boosters on spelling. And presumably more on spelling within sentence construction to practice thinking about the spelling as he writes.

N seemed fairly nonplussed about how he has done this year. He just nodded away to the teacher. Although he did say that he was really pleased once we got home. He then made sure everyone in the family knew how well he did.

People moan about the assessments and the tests the children have to do nowadays. But if children cope with them and do better than they expect, it can really give them a boost to their confidence.

Reading breakthrough

Whenever it’s parents evening at school, they usually have a Scholastic school book fair. N would usually stay home to parents evening but this time he’d spotted a few books in the book fair leaflet that come home that he wanted.

As soon as we arrived at school he was straight at the bookshelves looking through the books and trying to find one or two of the books that he had chosen. The one he decided on was [amazon_textlink asin=’1407168053′ text=’Tom Gates epic adventure’ template=’ProductLink’ store=’bubbaandme-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’e9375429-8228-11e8-95b2-09bcdc24f52b’]. I don’t know where he’s heard about Tom Gates books before but he couldn’t stop talking about it and with enthusiasm like that and I couldn’t turn him down. So one book purchased, he then proceeded to read it all the way through the parents evening slot and in the car on the way home. Finally we seem to have a book that has him to actually read without me dragging books out and making him do so for his reading homework.

Not only has he been reading the Tom Gates book but he’s also been reading quite a bit of the book we reading at bedtime. That’s [amazon_textlink asin=’B015Z274D8′ text=’13 Storey Treehouse’ template=’ProductLink’ store=’bubbaandme-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’6f9cff69-8229-11e8-bc45-6161aaf3ce1f’] and while it’s got very odd and N said it’s getting a bit boring, he’s still been keen to read a few pages each evening.

We’re getting there with his reading. While he’s still sounding out some words and needs to start looking ahead so that he can read with some expression and a little more fluency, it’s all going well and I think he’s going to do fine as he moves into key stage 2 next year.

Swimming discussions

N has had a different school swimming teacher for the last couple of weeks. At his Saturday lesson he ended up with the same teacher while his normal one was away. One width of the pool and the school swimming teacher was asking the pool manager why he was still in the bottom group at school swimming. N’s been asking that most of the year.

When they swim with school, it’s year 2-4 so quite a few children to split across 3 groups. Most year 2 kids are in the bottom group unless they’re really strong swimmers, although N said that a couple of children have moved up. Moving up would have put him in with his usual Saturday teacher. But even though he moved up Saturday classes, he was still kept in the same school group. I explained that they can’t just move children up if there’s not space in the higher groups. But from working out today’s conversation, at least one swimming teacher thinks he’s in the wrong group. I doubt they’ll move him this late in the year but it shows N how much progress he’s done in swimming this year.

How’s your children’s end of term weeks going?

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