Saturday, October 27, 2007

Conferences

Conferences went well, the kids are right on target but we received suggestions for all the kids, which is more helpful than anything else.

Jonathon: Being a lefty is his biggest issue in this family. He copies what others do, which equals a page full of mirror image writing. So, out comes the old d'Nealian books and he'll have a page or two of handwriting practice to go with his reading each night. Reading is coming along fine. He can get through a page of Nate the Great, or Young Cam Jansen and he's read all the Ricky Ricotta books we have.
Nicholas: Good report all around. Sitting him next to kids who aren't his closest friends has helped. He's reading fine, the other day he plugged on the first Harry Potter, reading 3 pages out loud to me to help along his tone. He's getting better at reading for content and remembering details. He needs to practice his math facts outside of class more.
Rebecca: She's reading at 4th grade level and has finally found a series she enjoys on her own, the Animal Ark books. With the string of Bs on her report card she's determined to try harder and pull up her grades. That's going to take some effort in the reading response areas.
Katherine: We spoke with her Language Arts/Social Studies teacher, Math, Music and French. Her French teacher just loves her. She says Katherine is a great student, great accent, likes to practice (in class only, apparently, since she does say a word in French at home) and is wonderful to have in class. She said she notices that if Katherine is given some space, she does even better. The music teacher said she's come a long way with the Flute and needs to practice slurring and tonguing. It sounds a little wrong for a 6th grader, doesn't it? The math teacher mentioned how Katherine prefers to spend her break in the math room, by herself. Does that sound strange? Personally, I think it sounds like a good decompression time and understanding more about Katherine, that she takes everything quite personally and she said she doesn't want to hang around with the other girls talking about things that aren't of interest. As far as math goes, she needs to review more, even just go back a couple sections and do a problem or two to remember. Sounds easy enough. For LA/SS, organization comes into play. After conferences were done Ian and I went to Landmark and bought some organizational tools for her. Her desk is now a functional work space, not a game zone. We'll see how it goes. I should have taken a before picture, but I'll put up an after photo once I have it.
There you have it.

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