Parent Teacher Conference (Becca)

Joel and I went to Becca's parent-teacher conference yesterday. She has the same teacher as last year, which is good for us and her to have that continuity. Her teacher says her attention/focus issues are much better except for first thing in the morning; she has trouble doing anything self-directed ie when they come into the classroom in the morning they are supposed to read the smart board and follow the directions given there,  but she never does unless prompted to. So we are going to work on that. Her rocking continues but not as violently as last year -- she does not rock her chair across the floor or distract other students now. She pays attention and always responds when spoken to, which wasn't the case last year. She does take a very long time to finish assignments and tests and is one of the slowest in the class in that respect. But the finished work is of good quality and she doesn't seem to zone out or be distracted while she is working... just slow. So not sure what to make of that.

She did score in the 92% percentile on the verbal portion of the CogAT, which is given to all second graders as part of testing for the TD program. The 92nd percentile score means she will be taking a second test later this month, and if she scores over the 95th percentile then she'll be in TD for literacy (but probably not math). Ben, by the way, bombed all three sections of the CogAT and eventually found his way into TD in 5th grade for both math and literacy so I am pretty confident those tests are bullshit.

Academically, she is doing fine in everything except spelling / phonics, which she has always had trouble with. She is just now starting to be able to sound out words-- her method of learning to read seems to be memorizing whole words and not sounding things out because she is very bad at sounding things out and remembering spelling patterns. I have recently noticed a little improvement with this, so hopefully the spelling will also improve this year. Overall an encouraging report!