The Po Show

Smarts

We had Tessa's conference this evening (a make-up conference, since our scheduled meeting last week was cancelled on the snow day).

I'd already seen her report card, and I looked up her score on the Developmental Reading Assessment. The latter took some digging, since her score was 24, and the scores for first grade stopped at 16. I did some more research and discovered that 24 is the level that kids are expected to be at the END of SECOND grade.

So yeah, her teacher says she's progressed phenomenally in reading this fall. Her fluency needs work, but her comprehension is excellent. The teacher said that in all of her years of teaching, Tessa has the best comprehension and retrieval of detail of any child she's ever encountered. This teacher is a straight-up kind of person, and she wouldn't say that if she didn't mean it. She also said she didn't give "4"s (meaning performance above grade) very often, and Tessa had a slew of 4s.

So, wow. I knew she was doing well, and I've been amazed at how well she is reading, seemingly all of a sudden, but I was a little blown away by these rave reviews. I find it especially amazing, considering how little time I've given to her schoolwork. She does all of her homework by herself, and she generally does not want to read to me, ever. I hear her read things out loud all the time, which is how I knew that her reading had improved so much.

Matthew's conference has been put off till next month, when his new modifications have been in place for awhile. They have been letting him use an electronic spell checker in class, to help him with his writing. His aide time is being increased (not by a lot, an additional 40 minutes a day, so that she can always go to specials with him, but that's when he needs her the most, so at least we got that). The school psychologist is going to be coming in to lunch, to help facilitate peer interaction. He'll have a scribe for the ELA testing next month, so he can verbally give his answers. He'll still be required to verbally spell what are considered the "fourth grade words" in the sentences, which he's going to have a hard time doing, but at least he won't get bogged down by the hopelessness of writing out the sentences himself. He is going to start one to one tutoring in the Wilson method to help him improve his spelling skills (which we're going to pay for, but I do think the private tutoring is the way to go).

I do hope, and am hopeful, that these modifications will help. Because, ouch, his report card was pretty dismal. If our school gave out letter grades, he'd absolutely be failing all academic subjects except math, and he has some big deficits there too. He can't write out his answers, he can't show his work (he just figures out word problems in his head, but can't tell you how he got the answer), he does not know his times tables still. He's a freaking mathematical genius, as far as understanding concepts and intuitively figuring problems out, but the mechanics are just so hard for him.

One of the ladies in the office was telling me today that she saw Matthew in the media center yesterday, and he was reading an encyclopedia. She remarked on it, and he told her all about what he was reading. She said her head was spinning, that she could barely keep up with all the things he was explaining. More of the Little Professor syndrome he's had since he could talk.

My two children, both so smart, so bright, but one so very well suited for school, and one just not :(.