Education
We had parent teacher conferences the first week of October. G had just been released from the hospital that morning and life has been kind of a series of temperature checks and medicine dispensing since then so I didn't say much.
It was pretty much what I expected. She said he's a great kid. He's absolutely no trouble. He's well behaved, no behavior issues, gets along with peers, stays on task. All high marks. He had missed almost two full weeks of instruction at that point. And the entire unit on 3D shapes. So she said it wasn't going to be a big deal but they were testing on them the following week and if he scored a little low, missing the two weeks prior could be why.
I really didn't think too much about it. I know he's bright. I know he will learn.
But where she did get me was on sight words. She gave me a sheet of paper with all the sight words on them for the quarter and she had highlighted 5 of them. 5 of the 17 he was supposed to know and she said he only knew 5. This I was sure was patently false.
Slight aside, but I know that she has behavior problems in the class. It's a good class she says, but G comes home and is always telling me about these two boys who throw a football across the room, who get W's (warnings) for getting out of line, who go off task and who need a lot of attention. G, who is not that way at all, I feel, is below her notice at this point. She doesn't have to spend a lot of time with him. He does all of his assignments to completion. He works on his work and waits to be told his next task.
This puts him below her notice unless she calls him to the table to work him directly.
This is just the reality of being a kid in a classroom of 18. Which is a great number by public school standards.
So I get this list of sight words and I put them on my wall.
And he knew 10 of the 17 for sure, some he sounded out, and some he didn't know.
We work on drawing and creating things we're interested in, things that we are interested in knowing how to spell. Things like jail house and police department and fire and bomb and car and motorcycle and helicopter.
His first attempt to write police he spelled it "polees". Which I thought was really good. But when he saw the word in real life he was mad at me for letting him spell it wrong. Also - not sure why his N is still backwards sometimes.
It was pretty much what I expected. She said he's a great kid. He's absolutely no trouble. He's well behaved, no behavior issues, gets along with peers, stays on task. All high marks. He had missed almost two full weeks of instruction at that point. And the entire unit on 3D shapes. So she said it wasn't going to be a big deal but they were testing on them the following week and if he scored a little low, missing the two weeks prior could be why.
I really didn't think too much about it. I know he's bright. I know he will learn.
But where she did get me was on sight words. She gave me a sheet of paper with all the sight words on them for the quarter and she had highlighted 5 of them. 5 of the 17 he was supposed to know and she said he only knew 5. This I was sure was patently false.
Slight aside, but I know that she has behavior problems in the class. It's a good class she says, but G comes home and is always telling me about these two boys who throw a football across the room, who get W's (warnings) for getting out of line, who go off task and who need a lot of attention. G, who is not that way at all, I feel, is below her notice at this point. She doesn't have to spend a lot of time with him. He does all of his assignments to completion. He works on his work and waits to be told his next task.
This puts him below her notice unless she calls him to the table to work him directly.
This is just the reality of being a kid in a classroom of 18. Which is a great number by public school standards.
So I get this list of sight words and I put them on my wall.
So we played sight word bingo. (A big hit by the way)
We wrote letters to super heroes using sight words and then we circled the sight words in the letter the superhero wrote back.
And the sight words are on the wall next to the kitchen table which means at every meal we go over them again.
So today I got an email from his teacher that she retested him. He knew them all. He earned his very much desired "anchor" award (the theme for the school this year is "anchored in learning" so everything gets an anchor). She told me she was so proud of him and he's just done great.
The reality of public school is that in a class of 18 you don't get a lot of personalized attention. You're not going to get the one on one time with flash cards or to drill down concepts. And the sad reality is most of the actual learning and applying of that learning has to happen at home. I really wish kinder was still a half day experience because that would make this more palatable to me. He's there for 8hrs every day. They ought to be able to get it all in. But they can't. Even at this age.
I don't buy into the whole "we're asking them to know things they shouldn't have to know!" concept. I think there are a lot of buzz words that sound a lot more intimidating than they are. He does "writers workshop" and routinely does "independent reading." But what those things are truly is coloring time and quiet time with a book. Both things he does easily. Writers workshop he is supposed to attempt to sound out and write words. And to that end ...
His first attempt to write police he spelled it "polees". Which I thought was really good. But when he saw the word in real life he was mad at me for letting him spell it wrong. Also - not sure why his N is still backwards sometimes.
Our next activity is Meryl's wings around the globe rally. I'm going to adjust for the things he needs to be practicing (counting, 3D shapes, some geometry stuff, writing, reading) but mostly it's just a "this is the world ... this is where we are ... these other places are cool too" kind of thing. I'll let you know if it's a bust. I have three kids. Keeping up with this may not be feasible!
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