They may seem fine at home but let it all pour out at school - sometimes as a result of incidents
They may seem fine at home, but let it all pour out at school - sometimes as a result of incidents that seem relatively unimportant in adult eyes.I once taught a little boy who turned from a paragon into an unbearable little monster for several weeks, then back to paragon again. If at any time you are concerned about your child's progress, you can contact the school and ask to have progress monitored. A parental "expression of concern" is enough to place your child on the assessment ladder. And if there is a learning difficulty, the sooner you start climbing that ladder, the sooner your child will get special provision.Parents and teachers are often amazed to find emotional disturbance at the roof of a child's poor performance. This happens less nowadays, with regular testing and improved monitoring of special educational needs. Not knowing about myopia, they can't understand why the work seems to be getting harder.
In the same way, hearing loss can go undetected for years: children who don't know what it's like to hear clearly don't know what they're missing.Another key stage for the discovery of problems is the transition between primary and secondary school. Children that successfully covered up difficulties in the more relaxed atmosphere of primary school find their strategies don't work in the secondary environment. Bright children with a good language background can often bluff their way through school until then, compensating for problems in various inexplicable ways, but as the pace begins to hot up they come unstuck Often they don't even realise they've been "bluffing". They assume everyone else's brain works the same way as theirs and are astonished to discover they've coped so far in spite of considerable odds.Some learning difficulties have an obvious physical basis.
Children's work sometimes goes downhill because short-sightedness means they can't see what's written on the board. So what exactly can you do? The first step is to work out what's gone wrong. There are innumerable reasons for children underperforming - from emotional disturbance and learning difficulties such as dyslexia to lack of motivation because they're brighter than the rest of their classmates - and parents are often better placed than teachers to work out what's at the root of the problem. Many learning difficulties first rear their head at the age of seven or eight. You've gone through the appropriate motions - anger, disappointment, maybe even sympathy - but now the time's come to do something about it. The school report is bad. It appears your child has spent the last year going slowly - or perhaps not so slowly - downhill Lack of effort, no interest, poor results. Watermen and Lightermen The following officers of the Company of of the River Thames have been elected: Captain Sir Malcolm Edge, The Master; Mr J C Jenkinson, Senior Warden; Mr C J Livett, Mr J.G Johnson, Mr L.G Barrow, Junior Wardens..