Conference Outcome

"We are seeing a lot of good effort" was the consensus from Will's teachers at our conference this morning.

Hmmmm.... What does that mean? He is trying a lot harder, but still not getting it? He is trying and seeing good results?

Well, it seems it is a mixed bag.

He is paying more attention and focusing more. He is asking more questions. It seems when he tries harder and puts more effort into his work the outcome is better. Not perfect, but better. That is good.

Both teachers seem pleased. He is making progress but it is a work in progress.

His reading teacher showed us some of his work from the Tom Edison book he just read in class. There were four ovals on the page and he was supposed to fill each one with four different happenings from the book. She suggested they go back and look at the chapter titles to remember what was in each chapter. So, he wrote a the title of each chapter in each oval. He then wrote a sentence about something that happened in each chapter.

Yep, a sentence. No detail. Nothing else but a sentence.

So, Event 1 read like this: Tom's First Experiment Tom tried to warm some eggs. Yep, that was it. Tom tried to warm some eggs. Will didn't say why he was trying to warm the eggs (to make them hatch), Will didn't say how he tried to warm the eggs. No, he didn't. Well, that answer was not good enough. No detail.

That pretty much describes how he filled in the other three ovals. He received an S- on this assignment. So, we brought it home and went over it. We had him give us more detail. I knew that he knew this stuff. He had been talking to me about this Tom Edison book. He was excited about it and enjoyed it. He even told me some of the stories. The full stories. The same stories he could only come up with one sentence to write about.

His teachers think, as do we, that he is trying to get away with doing his work in as little time and with as little effort as possible.

He has shown some evidence of spending more time on his math. He wants to get it right and is asking Mrs. K for her help. She is beginning to track whether he is having difficulty with oral instruction vs. written instruction. Just to track if there is a pattern or not. That will be interesting to find out about.

All in all it was a good conference. I think we are all pleased with the progress, yet agree that we have a ways to go...