Bragging a Little

We had parent-teacher conferences for Haley and Preston last week, and I just have to brag on them a little.

Preston actually started out a little rough this school year. When they did the initial kindergarten testing, I think he was not paying much attention or was nervous or something, because he basically failed. Oh, I know they didn't phrase it that way when they told us about the test results, but he performed poorly enough on the tests that he ended up on what the teacher calls their "watch list" of students who are going to need extra help. He was put on an IEP (individualized education plan?) to help bring him up to standard. This was frustrating to me, because I knew he was capable of doing the things on the test (things like identifying shapes, counting, naming numbers, letters, and letter sounds) and did them at home. He just didn't do it during the testing for some reason. But now that he's settled into his kindergarten career, he has gotten past the testing roadblock and the teacher shared his current results. We looked at a little graph that showed where he is now compared to where he needs to be at the end of the year... and it was almost all: "Well, as you see he needs to be at an eighteen by the end of the year. He's currently at 37, so he's good there." With that, he is officially off the watch list and done with the IEP. He's doing great!

Haley continues to be a stellar student. The teacher even told Aaron that she deliberately saved Haley's conference for the last one of the day because she wanted to be able to end on a completely good conference. She's officially in 2nd grade, but is doing a lot of higher-level classwork. Often she has extra time in class (because she finishes her work quickly) and gets to help the 1st graders with their work. Haley LOVES this. Apparently the 1st graders love it too. The teacher said Haley is so good at helping them (and really helping them learn it, not just doing it for them) that the 1st graders all vie to have Haley as their helper. Haley also has a lot of those graphs like Preston's, showing that she has long since passed all her milestones for the year. And she's officially moved off the charts as far as her reading levels go. Right now they're rating her reading grade level at 6th grade... maybe 6 1/2. But they acknowledge that the reason for ranking her at that grade level is really because they just don't have tools in elementary school that will measure any higher than that. She could be reading at an even higher reading level, they just can't test for that using the elementary reader scales. Total smarty pants! (And frequently a smart-alek as well... but that's another post.)