Tonight we had SEP’s with Ethan’s and Tyra teachers. Ethan’s was first, he’s doing very well in his reading and in his math. Reading at this point in the second grade year the kids are supposed to be reading at a DRA level 24 and Ethan is reading at a level 28 (which is where he’s supposed to be by the end of the year). Mrs Washburn really had no problems to report and feels he is doing really well.
Tyra on the other hand….At this point of the year in first grade they are supposed to be reading at a DRA level 10. Tyra, when her teacher assessed her is at a level THREE! Mrs Jaque had her tested for placement in a remedial reading program, but Tyra’s placement was turned down because (according to whoever assessed her) she was reading just fine and scored to high to need a reading remedial program. So now we are wondering if Tyra is faking her reading difficulties or WHAT? I know she has a focus problem. She’s so social that she’s always paying more attention to what’s going on around her than the words on the page. She also has internal focus issues. I can control what’s going on around her when she’s at home (send the other kiddos outside or down the hall) but I can’t control what’s going on in her head. She will just be going along reading the book in front of her then all of a sudden she will stop and throw out some RANDOM comment. I can’t really control what’s going on inside her head to help her focus more. She also seems to have difficulties remembering difference between a ‘d’ and a ‘b’, and she confuses ‘p’ with ‘q’. It’s also very obvious when she is reading when she is actually trying, and when she’s just guessing at the words. I get really annoyed when she is just guessing because I feel like she’s just wasting her time and mine. I have made an appointment with the eye doctor next week to rule out any vision problems contributing to her reading difficulties, so we’ll see how that goes.
According to Mrs Jaque, she’s doing pretty well in math, but when I sit down to do math homework, she has NO CLUE how to do it. I talked to Mrs Jaque about that, but the two math activities that I mentioned that we had done the week before, were things that she hadn’t actually taught in class yet. Somehow she got behind the other first grade classes in math and she’s trying to get her class caught back up. So we’ll see if that’s part of the difficulties I was seeing at home. In short, Ethan’s doing GREAT, and I really worry about Tyra.