Spring Conferences

Andrew had his spring parent teacher conference this week. Eric and I are never worried about his performance in class, he is extremely good in school and he always tries his absolute hardest in class. In 1st grade at our school there are several criteria that they want students to hit to be considered at "benchmark" for their grade by the end of the year. They are supposed to be able to read a certain number of words out loud a minute and they are supposed to have a certain level of accuracy with math facts 0-10 (addition and subtraction).

Andrew currently is reading 38 words a minute. The benchmark for his grade is 40 words per minute. He should have no problem reading that by the end of the school year. He is getting better and better at reading. Recently he started participating in the school libraries "book clubs" where students set a goal for themselves and then receive "book booty" for the books they read. Then when they have earned a certain level they can cash in their booty for a prize. Andrew read all of the "Frog and Toad" books on his last reading club list. Now he is working on the Poppleton books. We will see how well he does with those over spring break. He has his eye set on a stuffed monkey for a prize.

Math is an area where Andrew is absolutely excelling. He not only can do the math work but he also has been explaining how he arrived at his answers to the class. Math comes extremely easily to Andrew and often the concept doesn't even have to be fully explained before he gets it. He does mental math in class which is (according to his teacher) slightly advanced for 1st grade. Every week his class takes a speed test of math facts in preparation for the big test at the end of the year. The tests started with math facts 0-2 addition or 0-2 subtraction and then continued to become more difficult until the student reached 0-10 addition or 0-10 subtraction. To pass the test and move to the next one you must receive better than 90% correct. There are 50 problems on each page and the students have 3 minutes to complete the test. Andrew has scored perfectly on each and every test with the exception of one. The one time that he didn't score perfectly he only missed the answers because he ran out of time. He only ran out of time because he started the addition test with subtracting. Stopping and correcting the ones that he had missed caused him to run out of time at the end of the test and he didn't finish. He was upset about it to say the least. He still passed the test though. I guess the last day of school before spring break they took a test. Andrew took the 0-10 subtraction test which is the last one. He says he was the only student to take it. Somehow I am not surprised.

All in all it was a wonderful report card. Good job Andrew!