Progress Report

We've made it through the first six weeks for Kellen, and Daddy and I had the parent-teacher conference today. Considering that he had come home with a few "Needs Improvement" on his weekly progress charts, we weren't surprised that he had some of those on his report card for behavior-related issues. Shocked, we were not.

It was; however, nice to know that when tested, he was at a 2nd grade reading level. And he is performing at an Excellent (Note: 95-100) level for mathematics for what is expected right now. And for the remainder of his Academics, he scored nothing below a "S" on his report card. In addition, he's getting some additional challenge practice for reading because he's reading at such a high level (teacher's aide pulling him and one other kid from his class and another from one other class out and working with them in a small group at their level) three times a week for about 45 minutes each time. In addition, he's getting "Enrichment" activities, which was explained to us as activities for students early-identified as those who most likely would be testing into GT.

All-in-all, I'm thrilled with how he's doing academically! Now, if we can simply try and pinpoint and improve on some of his behavioral issues, we'll be in better shape. Which is not to say we aren't in good shape now, it's simply to say that there is room for improvement.

So, our action plan is that for the next couple of weeks is that we'll be receiving a daily email letting us know if Kellen started the day with a positive or negative attitude. We're going to try and see if we can identify the "why" on his beginning-of-the-day attitude to see if 1) I need to change the morning routine; 2) he needs to get more sleep; 3) Daddy needs to commute more; 4) we need to scale back on some of the extracurricular activities; or 5) some combination of all of the above. If we can make progress in one area, that will be good enough for me!

Moving on....
Sparks.
Kellen is doing wonderfully at Sparks. He is FABULOUS at memorizing scripture. We went through a lesson tonight and the scripture was the first part of one, and he already knew the entire thing. It's amazing what he's learning from listening to the Sparks CD at night! So, just to see what he knew, I asked him the scriptures through the remainder of the book, and he knew all of them with the exception of 2, but knew those 2 with the one or two word reminder to start things off. His goal is to finish the book out this week - I suggested that we shoot for the end of the month.

I have gone through the book and made index cards with all of the scriptures on them in flash card style so that we can continue to go over them even after he finishes the book. Plus, it's helpful for me, even though I have no problem saying that Kellen has these verses down much better than I do!