We had Avery's teacher conference yesterday. I really didn't know what to expect, except that Avery's teacher thinks she's a sweetheart. I know that Avery's behavior has been very good so far based on her conduct sheet she brings home daily. I know her progress report had all A's so she seems to be doing ok. I also know that she had trouble that one week getting her classwork done on time. I could not wait to see what her teacher said in detail. I knew it would be hard for me to keep in within the 20 minute window we had scheduled. There was so much to ask and talk about!
First we went over Avery's reading level. Overall she said that Avery is a very strong reader. She's at an I which means she is reading on a 2nd grade level. She has to be at K when she completes first grade so she doesn't have far to go. She was at a J when she finished kindergarten so she did move down a level. Her teacher said that was normal and most kids usually move down one or stay the same over the summer b/c they aren't practicing as much as they do during the year. She read with 99% accuracy and only missed the word "On" and said "Oh". While it was obvious that it was an oversight, she wants Avery to read the sentence and realize herself that the sentence doesn't make sense saying "Oh". She wants her to identify her own mistakes and go back and redo the sentence without anyone telling her to. They want them reading 50-60 words per minute but Avery was only at 39. So she reads slow, but she did say that Avery talks slow in general so she doesn't expect her to read as fast as someone who is a fast talker. I couldn't agree more about Avery's slow twang. She's so cute. The only part of Avery's reading she was even remotely concerned was her reading comprehension. While Avery is able to tell the entire story in detail after you ask her what happened, she isn't able to make inferences about the story. She isn't able to make assumptions on her own, she just repeats what happened in the story. So if it doesn't explicitly state it, she can't interpret it. Well, I'm not very good at that either, so I am not surprised that she has a hard time with it. Her teacher thinks she will develop this as she gets more comfortable reading and gains confidence. She has take home readers every night that she reads which will help her with this.
She said Avery's handwriting is very neat. She knows how to put punctuation in the correct place. She knows where capital letters go. She does correct spacing of words. Overall her writing is great and there's not much she needs to work on. One thing her teacher was really proud of was how she corrected her own work. They had to take a story and edit it to make it sound better. Then they had to read out loud to themselves to see if it made sense. If it didn't they needed to mark out the word, put a carrot and write the new word. She said Avery was the only one in class that did it exactly as she said. She also corrected the rest of her story to make it sound right. She was proud that Avery was able to read it and correct it to make it better.
Her teacher also told me how well behaved her entire class was, and how they were all very smart such high achievers. I asked where Avery stood among her peers and she said compared to her class, she's average but compared to the entire first grade she is well above average. I think they all have their own strengths and weaknesses.
The only thing Avery had a "needs improvement" on was class participation. She said Avery is very shy and doesn't volunteer to answer questions. She has to call on Avery to answer and when she does, Avery stops and thinks and processes everything before she answers. She also talks very quiet as if she's uncertain of herself. I told her that's Avery's personality and she doesn't like to be in the spotlight. She doesn't like all the attention on her and doesn't like everyone watching her. She's always afraid of people laughing at her. Her teacher assured me that the class knows they are not allowed to laugh or snicker at anyone else and will get in big trouble for doing it. So hopefully as the year goes on Avery will get more comfortable with her peers and participate more. She said she did great when she was Star of the Week and had to present her poster to the class. She also did really well on her writing celebration where she had to read her story to the class. Avery did really well when it was just the two of them reading so she wants her to be just as confident when she's in front of the whole class.
No comments:
Post a Comment