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Son failing 4th grade
My middle child and only son is 9 almost 10 and we moved in June and in august my older kids started at their new s schools apparently my son has been doing awful he never mentioned anything and neither did the school and now as the semester is ending his teacher sends us a note about his poor grades how do I help him with school please take into account i have a new job and 4 daughters that also need me
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Maybe give some free advice about: Parenting?
A move can affect a childs performance in a new school. Then may regret leaving friends behind and have problems with making new ones so school is no longer fun and they lose interest. The school should have counselors you can talk to if this is the problem. Even if you ask your son, he may not realize that this is why he isn't doing well.
Another problem may be that schools only teach in one learning style which may not be his. It may not have been apparent at younger ages but 4,5 6 are the older grades and it becomes more obvious then.
The school district should have a person who can test him to see what his actual grade level is and his learning style.
I mention this as my last child was way behind in reading and some in math. The schools are afraid to hold kids back and even tho I insisted, wouldn't let her repeat a grade, feeling it would damage her psyche. So we had her tested and she was naturally at a grade level behind. We put her in a private school where parents need to participate putting in help at times with fund raisers, and teachers met often with parents. After a year there, she was back on track and we moved her back to public schools because of the cost for private.
Another thing I've heard, tho she wasn't in Montessori schools, my new husbands daughter was. He mentioned walking into a classroom of elementary kids and not a single one fidgeted, all had excellent attention spans and were working hard like college students. The staff said the reason why is that parents had to sign a promise to not allow the kids to have any sugar. They could tell when a child had sugar at home the night before because the next day, they'd be acting up. So as the other advice giver said, I would not assume right off that its ADD or some such thing. Apparently cutting sugar intake can help a lot. I am guessing in your case, it could be a combo of things, missing friends, not liking new school, teacher doing a bad job of working with him, wrong learning style taught/used, and perhaps amount of sugar in his system.
Call and ask to have a meeting with any and all of his teachers, school counselor and see if they can work harder to keep you in the loop and together all of you come up with a plan that all agree upon.
I had that with the elem/jr hi mix school my kids were in for middle school. They would call all the teachers, and counselors to a parent meeting with the child. I was happiest with that school because they were so willing to work with me.
If you don't get cooperation from the school, you may have to try another school, although if the move was the main problem, that won't fix things, only make it worse. You might want to check things out with a tutor or check if your school system has a person who can test for learning styles which if different than how he learns, he may need a tutor to help him cus the school isn't going to change for struggling kids.
I wish you the best. Dont despair, a half year may be gone but with dedicated school staff working with you and the child, lots can be done to pass the grade in the 2nd half. That happened with me with middle child.
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You should treat this as mostly a failing grade for the *school*. It's the school's responsibility to teach your son and keep him engaged, and clearly they're failing to do so. Quite possibly your son isn't putting in enough effort, or is allowing himself to become distracted or whatever, but he's only 9 years old -- it's the school which should be doing whatever's necessary to make him perform.
Probably you should speak to his teachers and figure out what's up. Very possibly you can do some things to help, such as by encouraging your son to take his homework and classes seriously if he's not already. By all means, if your son is goofing off all the time, it's probably appropriate to discipline him. But if the teachers start saying that it's all your fault or your son's fault, don't take that. They're the adults who are spending 40 hours per week with him with the sole purpose of teaching him.
If you reach the point where no improvement seems possible, I recommend changing schools.
Keep in mind that it's kind of unnatural for a 9-year-old to be spending 8 hours per day sitting indoors at a desk. Oftentimes kids this age just can't concentrate this long. Although some might encourage you to do so, I'd be very reluctant to give your son medication for attention deficit disorder. Being inattentive in this environment is natural, and the proper solution is for the school to work around it in some way.
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