Thursday, October 22, 2009

Parent Teacher Conferences

We had our first Parent Teacher Conference for Morgan and it went much better then expected. The teacher does notice that she has issues sitting still and she is annoying her classmates during circle time by sitting too close, poking them and hugging them too tightly. But the good news is that, despite these issues, she's learning and thriving. She is proficient or advance in all areas, excelling in the reading and writing department.

Unfortunately, for her report card, she did receive partially proficient in her writing. Nowadays, report cards are based on an assessment (test) given on a specific day, not on their overall ability that the teacher observes through out the weeks. So... if you have a stubborn little girl like we do, who decides on this particular day that she doesn't want to complete the assessment, you wind up with a partially proficient score. When she was writing her story, she drew herself and a lion but didn't not add details to show that she was at the zoo despite her teacher's coaxing. Below the picture she wrote "I WEN TO THE ZOO AD SW A LN" (I went to the zoo and saw a lion). Her writing is considered advanced but because she did not include details of the "where" in her picture (even though it was in her writing), she was marked down. The teacher told us that she usually completes the who/where/what requirement but since this was the assessment, there was nothing else she could do about the the report card score.

Welcome to the Public School System!

3 comments:

Shey said...

Welcome to No Child Left Behind. And so as not to offend anyone, I'm actually a conservative--just don't think NCLB is working as intended.

Anyhow, Morgan sounds like a wonderfully bright little girl, and it seems that the teacher recognizes that. Keep up the good work, Morgan!

Staci A said...

Well, I'm glad to hear she's doing well even if the assessments don't always show that. From what I've heard, most of the teachers hate these assessments as much as we do. The requirements they have now are so frustrating. Kids work so hard but it's not always reflected in those standardized scores.

jamielblev said...

I think she's doing fantastic. Some kids won't/can't even write that much. It's one thing to read words but then to figure out how to write the word just by hearing it. I think that's awesome! I don't know how they do the testing at Shelby's school. I know twice a week she goes for AR tests but that's just in reading. We keep getting notes that they are going to have a test coming up but I have no clue when it is or what will be on it.