In October, I had my first Report Card Conference of 4th grade
As usual, each teacher schedules each parent (or set of parents) for a 10 minute
meeting where you receive the report card and talk about the child’s progress
(small school). Now we have access to grades as soon as they are entered into an
internet system the school has and they bring the grades home. Plus we have
regular conversations and emails. So that way there aren’t a lot of surprises on
Report Card Day.
I didn’t have the sense of dread I have had the last two
times I went to one of these conferences. My daugher Arianahas been working hard
and for the most part been cooperative. She is grateful to have been able to
remain at her school and I think she is beginning to see everything that is
going into helping her. The teacher (Mrs. F) was hired late in the summer so we
didn’t get to have a sit down meeting with her until a few weeks into the year,
but I could tell from my initial conversations with her, she was going to have
an understanding of how to reach my daughter. So with the goals and plan she has
we (Asst Principal and I)met with her and she made some additional adjustments.
Mrs. F has worked with challenged children before. At the time of the hire, from
what I understand, no one involved in the hire knew that. And I couldn’t have
asked for any more with the first full school year after the
diagnosis.
Patience is required. Most of the progress I see right now in
Ariana is emotional. There is a whole team responsible for that. Between what we do
at home, the reading specialist I hired with whom she meets once a week, her
teacher, her school's Resource teacher, the Foster Grandparent (volunteer in the
classroom), and the assistance of her 3rd grade teacher (Ms. W) who helped her
with math over the summer and continues to work with her an hour each Monday and
Thursday under Mrs. F’s direction, Ariana is more confident in a lot of tasks that
used to send her screaming from the room.
Her handwriting has improved
immensely too. When she really takes her time, it is downright exceptional
especially for a student dealing with Dyslexia. Time doesn’t always allow her to
write that slow, so we are going to practice more on the weekends when we are
working on vocabulary to put a little more speed in with the neatness. My main
goal had really been to make sure she puts space between her words, (something a
significant percentage of children with learning challenges neglect to so) and
helping her get what is in her brain onto paper when she needs to.
She
has had some oral tests, but the teacher gives the whole class oral tests. She
does have a reduced spelling list, (14 instead of 28 words) but the students
have various ways of earning extra credit. For her, she gets extra points if she
does the any work associated with the words on the list she is not required to
learn. Because there is reading homework each week and she reads 4th grade
material at slightly less than half speed, her math homework is reduced; her
tests are not, but she gets more time.
4th grade is a big step up from
3rd, especially in the areas of Language Arts and Reading. The report card had
an A in Physical Education, an A in Bible and Cs in everything else (Math,
Language, Spelling, Reading and Spanish). Personally I was thrilled. Ariana not so
much and that’s fine, because I want her to want to go up from there. But I
wanted her to find the place of wanting to continue to improve and stop short of
feeling bad about herself for getting Cs. Last report card at the end of 3rd
grade, she had an A in the Bible, Penmanship, and PE. There was a C in Reading.
Math and Language were both low Ds, Spelling, an F.
I’m just as proud of
her as the parents who have straight A students. What really was nice to hear
from her teacher was was, “Ariana knows the material.” She’s learning!
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