Boy’s School Report

We received Boy Seymour’s report on Friday. To be quite honest, I am surprised they even bothered this year. How can you write a report for a child you haven’t seen for months, who hasn’t been tested on anything and whose mother is the driving force behind any work done – at huge personal detriment*, and with unmeasured quantities of shouting, stress and  hair-pulling?

Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful. Boy’s teacher has been brilliant. She’s phoned us up, replied to messages and even dropped off a reward jar full of sweets for him. I am pleased that his efforts to keep up with his work have been recognised – regardless of whether it was forced upon him by me or not. But a report, based upon his remote learning, is a curious thing.

Yet still, I pored over it, keen to find out what my own son is like – or was, before his school days were interrupted by all that Corona nonsense. It was a lovely summary of him, with words like friendly, creative, mature and outgoing dotted about. I smiled as I read the report, and chuckled at the hidden messages therein (over-polite reasons why his written work may not be up to scratch, for example!). But I did find myself thinking that this year, the only person qualified to write a report about my son is, in fact, moi.

So here goes.

BOY SEYMOUR – END OF YEAR REPORT – JULY 2020

Boy is a confident child, bordering on the obnoxious. He has strong opinions, and is not afraid to shout them at volume. He is indeed mature beyond his years, but must learn to accept that a decade on the planet does not qualify him to know more than his mother. His spoken vocabulary is impressive, and he will often use words to good effect, but only when shouting, and only when trying to get his own point across. His verbal reasoning skills are thus second-to-none.

When it comes to writing, though, the superior vocabulary Boy possesses is let down by a laissez-faire attitude to spelling, whereby he will accept any roundabout letter combination that exits his pen, and one word will often be presented with four different spelling options per paragraph. Editing skills are lacking, as a result of a reluctance to revisit any work that he has perceived to be “done and dusted”.

Boy Seymour has superior thinking skills, and a creative mind. His bird trap project highlighted his aptitude for design and gave a rare demonstration of patience, and also demonstrated a level of cooperation with his classmate/sister. The result was not his desired outcome, but he should take consolation from the fact that it was probably the best one for the bird.

Boy is competent in Mathematics, but his habit of rushing through his work often results in him having to do it twice, which is frustrating for all concerned. His times tables are secure, but I am not sure how.

ICT is an area where Boy excels. He will happily gaze at a screen and fiddle with knobs for hours, and will always opt for the high tech medium of submitting his work, rather than the more traditional methods, like putting pen to paper. He is particularly proficient in the use of the video response facility on Seesaw. 

In Physical Education, the lack of a competitive forum for his efforts has suited Boy, and he has thoroughly enjoyed donning a cap backwards and applying a surprising amount of effort to the GoNoodle PE activities, with a complete lack of self-consciousness. Well done.

All that remains is for me to say how enlightening this last term has been as Boy’s substitute teacher. He has been a joy, at least some of the time, and there have been moments I will never forget. Going forward into Year Six, we must try to introduce Boy to the pleasure of reading. Whilst the Ahlbergs’ Happy Families series is all well and good, for a child with his capabilities, they are not challenging him sufficiently to deepen his understanding of grammar and literary content. I shall therefore be pushing Morpurgo, at least. 

Signed: Mummy Seymour

(Boy Seymour was awarded his Chief Scout Silver Award on Thursday. He’s doing something right!)

*I exaggerate.