Ben's First Report Card

This afternoon Joel and I had Ben's first parent-teacher conference and received his first report card of his public school career... a very momentous occasion... there really were no surprises. The grading system up through second grade is a number system of 1 through 3 for each category with 3 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. He got "3"s in all of the reading subcategories, "3"'s in all of the math, science and social studies categories, and in the "character development" section he got "2"'s for "takes care of materials", "completes tasks", and "works independently". These are all related to his absent-mindedness (losing pencils, forgetting things in his cubby, leaving his backpack on the school bus, etc, as well as his fine motor problems (discussed below).

Writing does not get graded in the first quarter, but we had an in-depth discussion about his writing skills. Basically, he is improving, but doing his letters and numbers and free-hand drawing are much more difficult for him than for other kids. His teacher said she's thought about referring him for occupational therapy but wanted to hold off since she has noticed he is improving and that when he puts his mind to it he seems to be able to do it. She showed us some examples of his work, and on a couple of pages I had to unfortunately point out to her that he must have gotten someone else to do parts of it for him! I felt bad saying so, but in one picture it looked like he had drawn some trees, the moon, a night sky... all fine and looks like Ben's ability... but then there was a picture of a bat and a bird and I am sorry but there's no way my son can draw a bat or a bird. As Joel put it, "That's a better bird than I can draw right now."

On a positive note, she said that when she tested his reading comprehension, he had one of the highest scores in the class. He was able to answer questions about a story that was read to him, and make inferences about things that were not explicitly stated such as the time of year, character motivations,etc, and retold the story to her in great detail.

So, overall a good report card, and we're just going to keep an eye on the writing/ drawing issues and see if he continues to make improvements.