Advice needed parents meeting later concerns re numeracy

[Pipsqueak16]

Dear All,

I need some advice as to how to tackle my concerns with the teacher in a positive way.
I have a DS in year 1 in a very lovely school with a lovely and very good experienced teacher.
DS is felt to be doing very well across the board. He was assessed to be 2C at maths at entrance to year 1 and his spring report said he was a 2B.
He works with year 2 for maths and did SATS with them and scored a 2A (he was not put in for the level 3 paper.) He brought the paper home and had scored 28- virtually every question correct. There has been talk that he will move up to year 3 for maths and literacy next year.
However his report has just come home and says he is still 2B for maths. He can add double and triple digit numbers in his head (self-taugt method as has never been taught paper methods yet for double digit addition) and can do so when the sums involve carrying/ bridging 10/100. He can work out fractions of numbers eg what is a quarter of 24. He understand some simple equivalent fractions eg 1/2 is the same as 2/4 and so on and so on. Knows 2,3,4 5,9, 10 and 11 times tables. He basically just "gets" numbers in a very instinctive way. He even understands negative numbers and the concept of infinity.
Earlier in the year his teacher gave me the "criteria" for the levels with some areas to work on since he is likely to go to do maths with year 3. We don't have lots of time to do things at home beyond incorporating maths in every day life and he plays on maths whizz. However looking at the criteria he can definitely do everything for level 2 and a number of the level 3 attributes.
I am not sure if the school realise exactly what he can do- I do not believe they have established the limites of his abilities in numeracy. His workbooks have come home and show work like counting on or back in 10's, naming shapes, adding near multiples of 10 eg 19. 29 etc. Most of this stuff he would have found pretty straight forward a year ago. He does his maths homework in 5 minutes without even needing to engage his brain.
Although I am told he is being challenged, I am pretty certain that in maths he is not being stretched really. I wonder if the problem is that he is already well ahead of expectations based on their assessment of him and therefore they don't actually expect more of him IYSWIM?
As I say a lovely school who have really done their best with him in all respectes. I just don't know how to address this with the teacher. I also don't understand why they are reporting him as a 2B, when he comfortably scored a 2A in the SATS they had him sit.

[MollyBdenum]

My understanding is that for a 2A, he would have to be do everything on the level 2 list and around 40% off the level 3 things, so the assessment at 2B might be accurate. However, from what you've said, it sounds as though he could have reached a higher level if given the optimist to do so, so it's definitely worth talking to the teacher. Basically, just mention your concerns as you have done here.

[ohthegoats]

SATs is a one off occasion - some children score much higher, or much lower than the level/sublevel in which they are actually working. A 2B in maths at the end of year 1 is a good level. If they let him do a level 3 paper at that early stage, they would be putting a lot of pressure on him (and the school to be honest), to make accelerated progress all through the rest of school, and particularly by the end of year 6. Maybe they are sure that his knowledge of other areas of maths isn't secure at a 2A, or that his application of his number knowledge isn't secure either. Application of skills regards problem solving and investigations is taking a higher priority in the new curriculum beginning in September, they might be reacting to that too. Some of that is about reading comprehension and maturity, so not just pure numeracy/number skills.

[Pipsqueak16]

Thanks for advice, both of you.
Had a very helpful discussion with his lovely teacher. There appears to be agreement that his pure mathematical knowledge is extremely good along with his mental maths. Where he comes unstuck in class appears to be that he has novel approaches to problem solving questions, which may not be immediately logical to the rest of us but make perfect sense to him. Sometimes he also rushes into things quickly, misses a step in the process and will come up with a wrong answer even though he has the knowledge to get to the correct one. There was also discussion of the broadening up of the curriculum next year.
No problems with literacy which is further ahead than maths anyway.
Very helpful to understand where the school are coming from and hopefully he will benefit from working in mixed year3/4 classroom next year and homework allocated from there....
Now to get on with having lots of summer holiday fun