Daughter's response at school is always 'I don't know' ???

doom

My little princess is only 4 years old and her teacher gives her words to learn as homework. We go through them with her and she practices regularly and quite soon after we can hold the words up and she will tell us what they are. She is definititly learning them because we mix the order up and hold them up one at a time, etc...

But then when she gets to school and her teacher asks her what the words are, 9 times out of ten she just says ' I don't know'. It's the same with picture story books that she looks at. At home she goes through the book in great detail telling us what is happening but at school she acts like she has never seen the book before...

Is it just my little princess that does this or do all kids do it???
Does anyone know any techniques that can give children more confidence in the classroom???

Any help avery much appreciated..:beer:

fsdss

my 5yo does it all the time - its really frustrating. his teacher also says he doesnt socialise well and is quiet- last week he went to 3 different houses for tea (arranged by his peers) and this week we will be going out with other friends for play (all arranged between them). he had no problems in nursery with socialising and he doesn't stop chopsing round here so i guess he's learning his boundaries at school. i guess the quiet ones are always the ones overlooked by teacher.

doom

Normally she's given 5 new words each week but last Friday her teacher only gave her two new words because she had not demonstrated in class that she knew them all... despite my wife jotting down in her note book that she does in fact know them all as explained to the teacher each week...

So now rather than my little girl learning 5 new words each week she's only being given 2... which my wife thinks that in the long term could do more harm than good as it only slows the learning process down.. after all, the real problem is not her learning the information ... but instead it's just that she wont do it for the teacher. So now we don't know what to do..!

Carmina_Piranha_3

by just giving her 2 words they probably think it will help her to get a proper grip on the letter sounds and consonant clusters etc. rather than confusing her with too many words at a time. some children learn at a slower pace, it doesn't mean she'll always be given less to do. is she still in reception year? if they've tried taking her out of the noisy classroom for one to one sessions then i don't see what else they can do if you, her parents, are the only people to see that she does know the words. perhaps she'll get more confidence in time.

mountainofdebt

Why not make a star chart and give her a star for every word she gets right at School?

When she gets to a pre-determined numer of stars treat her....well it could be something you were going to do but she doesn't need to know that does she?

doom

Yes she is in the reception class for the summer term and then she'll move up to Year 1 in September.

The annoying thing is she is actually learning her words rather quickly.. I understand that it's no good though if she wont then show the teacher but I just thought it would have made sense to continue with the 5 words a week.

I'm half tempted to get the camcorder out and show her teacher proof she can do it and does indeed know it.

She'll happily show her nan and Grandad and you can even say to our little girl how do you spell can and she'll say curley Ker, a , ner without any prompting of her little tiny (flash cards) words.

But she seems to just day dream at school and will look at the ceiling etc.

The other week her teacher asked her to go and fetch her gym bag from the corridor and a few minutes later she was found just leaning up against the wall and when asked again to get her PE kit, my daughter replied "I can't find it" even though it was right there in front of her hanging on her peg next to her name. Apparently she was the the last child told to get her stuff so it wasn't a case of all the identical navy gym bags staring back at her Confusing her.

MissBehaving

My 4 year old is the opposite. DD is still at nursery - going to school in September.

When we sit down with her she pretends she doesnt know her words, but when she is at school she rattles them off.

I write in her homework book that she is struggling - the nursery teacher writes the opposite!!!!

doom

mountainofdebt wrote: »

Why not make a star chart and give her a star for every word she gets right at School?

Praising her for showing the teacher is something we've been doing but perhaps there has been to much emphasis on what she hasn't been showing her teacher... The star chart is such a simple idea but perhaps it's what she needs.:j

Mandles

I couldn't tell the time until i was quite old as i was so scared of a teacher. My mind would just go blank also to do it in front of the whole class made me like this . Maybe it is just that (nervousness).
She's only 4 , i wouldn't worry too much .If shes doing it ok at home i really would not worry at all.

...by the way its 7.50!

plane_boy2000

Dont really know what to suggest, but our 3 year old is the same - she always says she dosent know anything even though she does!

her 4 year old brother is the oposite and knows everything and wants to tell the world he knows everything.

All I can say is she is still very young so perhaps give it another 6 months before becoming overly concerned with it

doom

I don't want to tell the teacher how to do her job.. so we'l probably give her words ontop of the teacher's 2 to make up the original 5 she was getting each week. Only monosyllabic words as she is only 4..!

The problem would then be how can we put a stop to our daughter acting this way at school, in general?