The picture is of course from Disneyland but I thought I should give an update on Andrew and school. The day we left for our vacation Andrew had his spring conferences. Eric and I were not concerned about school. I was interested to see if there was anything we needed to do to prep him more for 1st grade. Andrew's grades were overwhelmingly "exceeds expectations." Not only is he reading all of the sight/wall words that he is supposed to be reading for the quarter, he also is reading over half of the ones they will be covering from now until the end of the year. His teacher just encouraged us to keep him reading and to let him read as much and as difficult of books as he wants to. No need to keep him at grade level at all. She also gave me a list of the high frequency words for 1st and 2nd grade so we can work with those a bit too.
The one thing he needs to work more on is his writing. He has to be willing to take a chance and write a word regardless of whether or not it is spelled right. He is very concerned about what is the "right" way to spell. Unfortunately it can bog him down and he tends to simplify his vocabulary when writing to words he knows how to spell correctly rather than take a chance with a more difficult word. The more he reads and the more he works at it though the easier it is going to be. And lets be frank, spell check is a beautiful thing for those who are spelling impaired!
The last thing we received at the conference was an update on his speech. Andrew has been working so hard both in his homework and normal conversation and Eric and I definitely hear an improvement. He is currently working at sentence level with his "sh" sounds. He met his objective for the sound in individual words and is making progress with the sound in sentences. Andrew's progress with his "l" sound has been great as well. He is working with the sound at a sentence and monologue level. It is coming along nicely and we are very proud of him! The final sounds he is working on are the "s" and "z" sounds. He is still working with these sounds with the therapist exclusively and is having a harder time with them. Eric and I are kinda baffled a bit because we don't hear anything super wrong with the way he says the sounds but if they say it isn't coming out right then maybe we all are just not knowing what to listen for. I am sure we will be getting homework for those sounds in the near future as well!
All in all it was a great report card and we are super proud of all the great work Andrew has done this year. He is loving kindergarten and I am sure this is just the start of a pattern of loving school in the years to come!
3 comments:
I noticed that Andrew is speaking a lot more clearly. And that sometimes he actually slows down his cadence so he can say things the correct way. I was impressed!
Yeah, he is speaking more clearly. Especially with the "l" and "sh" sounds. I know we will have significant work to do on the "r" when we get there but I guess a lot of kids are closer to 8 before that one comes around. Now he just actually needs to speed the cadence back up so it sounds natural when he is talking. Then he will be officially done with that sound and be able to move on to a different one. It will be interesting to know how long he has to do the speech therapy for. I guess time will tell!
I love that he is already such a reader. I love to see kids read at such a young age! It is interesting that he is so concerned about making mistakes in his writing, what a little perfectionist! What a great little guy!
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