My 4yo is in reception.
Largely unknown to us, he taught himself to read just before he was 4 so when his nursery first handed out reading books he read everything they gave him perfectly until in the end they gave up on banded books and just told him to pick what he liked. Before starting school he could happily read Roald Dahl, Flat Stanley etc...
He's also always been fascinated by how things work/why things are the way they are. He reads lots of books about Space, science etc that he chooses at the library and seems to memorize the information almost immediately so he can tell you all about the water table, how electricity is generated, causes of volcanoes, earthquakes etc...
Both DH and I were early readers so didn't really think any of this was unusual but since he's started school it's become clear that he is quite a long way ahead of all the other children.
By way of example, they do show and tell each week - DH took a model of the solar system and talked the class through the names of the planets before explaning to them about the phases of the moon. After he told them all about the 'waning gibbous' (I had to look it up myself - apparently he read about it in one of his books) his teacher said she thought he was gifted and needs extending.
He has different reading books and different writing exercises from the rest of the class (who are all reading the same book as the basis of their phonics lessons) which he does either independently or with a teaching assistant when the rest of the class are doing more simple work.
His handwriting is still pretty spidery so I've suggested that he do a bit more practice on that if the work everyone else is doing isn't suitable for him and I think revisiting all the basic phonic sounds with the other children isn't a bad thing anyway as it will reinforce his spelling.
I'm keen for him to join in with the rest of the class as much as possible - he has made good friends and really enjoys school so I'm a bit worried that all this having different work to everyone else might make him feel too 'different'. On the other hand I don't want him to be bored either.
Anyway (sorry this has got very long) we have a meeting coming up with his teacher and I could do with some advice/suggestions of things to ask.
What do you think? Is it better to just downplay all of this for now and wait for the others to catch up a bit or should I push for them to keep up the pace he seems to have set for himself?
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Advice Please - extension work
8 replies
wandymum · 22/01/2013 10:18
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