I See Changes

Yes I do! Man, the last couple of days Will has brought home work from school that he has already completed and it looks like another child's. I kid you not. It is so neat and so thorough.

Last night he brought me his homework to be checked. He had completed all three pages at school, but wanted me to see it. Whoa! I asked him if it was his! He grinned from ear to ear and told me it was. I asked him what has changed and he said he doesn't know. I hope he keeps this up.

Now, on the other hand. He has still brought home work on Fridays that have less than praise-worthy grades. Almost always it is due to a careless mistake or not having read/followed the instructions. Maybe with this new found neatness will come more focus to detail. We can hope!

First Grades of 4th Grade

Well, Friday Will brought home his first graded papers from 4th grade. All were either math or social studies, which means they were from Mr. P's class. He likes to put grades on things. Last year, none of Will's math pages actually had scores on them, but apparently this year they will!

So, for the most part they were good. I still can't get over the fact that an 83 is a C. What is up with that? An 83 used to be a solid B. But, not now. Not at Loveland. So on Will's first Social Studies paper he got a C. An 83/C. Unfortunately, 3 of the points he missed were because he did not capitalize River as in the Mississippi River. Three times he missed that, so to me it is obvious that he does not realize "River" is supposed to be capitalized. I asked him about it when we went over his homework and I was right. He didn't know.

On several of his math pages he got A+'s, which is fantastic. On another he got a B. Again, he gets the work, he just makes careless mistakes. Adding incorrectly, etc... But when you are figuring out a word problem and you make one minor addition error, it changes the final answer. And with numbers, one off makes it wrong!

They did two sets of multiplication facts. How many they could get done in a minute. He did not do too hot on those. Luckily they were not graded on them. He definitely needs to work with flash cards or something, though he says no way, he does not want to. How do you get past that?

Last night he saw me doing Ben's spelling homework with him. Backwriting. He asked me to do it with him. So he brought up his spelling book and we looked at his words for the week. After we did the spelling words I decided to do some multiplication facts on his back. It worked and I was proud of myself. He thought it felt good and enjoyed doing it. So, he didn't realize we were actually practicing!!!! We only did the 3 facts. He definitely does not know them. I will try again tonight. I need to find some sort of something to reward him with, encourage him to practice. Just getting a good grade does not seem to be enough incentive, unfortunately. I don't know why and it frustrates me. I don't know how to make him care about his work.

Mom, have you ever had to repeat a grade?

That is the question Will has been asking me. That is after only one week of school. Yikes!

He says 4th grade gets harder and harder every day and that he doesn't know if he will make it to 5th.

Poor baby. That worries me a little bit. Not that he actually won't make it to 5th grade, but that he already thinks it is hard. He was saying this at the end of day 4!

So, I had talked to him a little bit about what he thought was hard. He couldn't really tell me, but I told him that if it really starts to seem to hard that he needs to tell me or Mrs. C or Mr. P. That we are all here to make sure he gets to 5th grade. I told him that we can get help from a tutor or he can maybe stay after school a little bit with the teacher or stay in at lunch if he has something that he really is having trouble with.

I am debating whether or not to send an email to Mrs. C about his concerns. I want to touch base with her about him and about his experiences in 3rd grade. But, I kinda want to give her enough time to form an opinion on Will in her classroom. Maybe at the end of this week I will send her an email. That will give him the rest of this week to see how it is going and what he is thinking now.

I do have a feeling, though, that we could be in for a long year with him.