On Thursday, reports came home in two brown envelopes, and Alfie's had a smaller white one tucked inside it with Phonics Screening Check on the front, in a font that looked as if it were trying very hard to be friendly. I read it standing up in the hall, with my coat still on and Alfie hopping from foot to foot beside me, asking if it was good.
It was good. He scored 35 out of 40, and the letter said the threshold was 32, which makes him working at the expected standard. I read the number twice and then once more aloud, so he could hear it, and he said 'Is thirty-five more than thirty-two?' and I said it was, and he said 'Is it more than Isla's?', and Isla, from the stairs, said she couldn't remember hers, which is probably for the best.
The aliens
I'd known about the check since June, but only because Alfie told me in the bath. 'There were aliens in my reading,' he said, with a flannel on his head. It took me some time to establish that the test has a section of made-up words, each with a picture of a little cartoon alien next to it, and the children are told the aliens are visitors who need help reading their own names. He had taken this with great seriousness. 'They can't read,' he said. 'I had to do it for them.'
What I hadn't known is that the school doesn't tell parents the result until the report, so it was a month of me not asking. I didn't ask, and he didn't say, and I'm quite proud of both of us.
What the reports said
Alfie's report is the kind that reads like his teacher has spent a year liking him. He's 'a joy to teach', 'enthusiastic about anything involving dinosaurs or football' and 'always willing to have a go'. His reading is 'secure', and his writing has come a long way since September, to the point where he now produces a full sentence, if it has a goal in it. The one thing to work on is stopping and thinking before he runs in the corridor. I could have written that line myself.
Isla's was longer, and in some places a bit sharper. Her reading is well above expected, and her writing has 'real flair'. The comment about maths was that she 'doesn't always believe she can do it', which I read three times and showed to nobody until Rob got home. I thought about it for most of the evening. Then, at tea, Rob read it, said 'Same', and got a look from his daughter that could have stripped paint.
How we talked about it
We did tea at the usual time on Thursday, and I'd decided in advance not to make a speech. Each of us read our own report aloud, with no comments from anyone else, and then said one thing we were proud of and one thing we'd try next. Alfie's proud thing was 'the aliens', and his thing to try was 'not running, maybe'. Isla's proud thing was her story about a lighthouse keeper, and her thing to try was putting her hand up in maths. She said it as if she were reading a charge sheet. Rob said his was 'running, apparently'. We let that go.
On Friday we had pizza, which isn't a reward, because it's Friday. But I'm aware that everyone's mood was slightly better for it.
A Year 1 to remember
There are still seven school days to go before the holidays, but a report always feels like the closing of a door. He started September a boy who could read the first four lines of a book and then lost interest. He ends it reading dinosaur facts aloud in the bath, which is how I know about the stegosaurus's brain, and the name of the longest one. In between there was the Friday packed lunch, the first wobbly tooth in March, which came out in a piece of apple, Beavers since January, the nativity sheep and the long, dreary winter of reading records. I stopped counting the nights in March, but the record is a thick book of ticks now, and 'good reading' in Rob's handwriting and mine.
The report's on the fridge, under the magnet shaped like a pizza slice. The phonics letter is next to it, because he asked, and I'm not going to be the one to take it down.
