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So, since I've done a lot of complaining around, I wanted to say something positive. ( My ds has been pretty unhappy in kindergarten.) I had another parent/ teacher conference this morning. I was pleasantly suprised by how prepared the teacher was. She had printed out a copy explaining the strands looked at by map testing. She was able to point out some of his strengths and mentioned basically more and more writing (not for handwriting), but sentence development and vocabulary usage. She also said he knows all the sight words she has (I'm not suprised), so she is getting a new, harder list. She will make him repeat the Star test this week. She also said that she thinks his MAP scores should really be much higher, but he "races" though the testing.

The only really negative thing she said is that she thinks his reading comprehension is not that good. Her example of her assessment was this: DRA-had him read a 12 page book and recall the story. A boy ate an apple (pg 1), ate an orange (pg 2), etc. My ds missed 3of 12 fruits, 3 that were in the middle. So, this convinced the teacher that he has poor comprehension. I have to admit I am a bit baffled. He is reading 3-4 grade books at home and can accurately recount a book and a chapter within a book. Ds also uses AR and always scores 100%. I am going to have him work with the easier books she sent home, but I feel like something is amiss. Guess, I'll see how the books go. Then I can communicate again with his teacher.

I'm glad you had such a good conference! It can be so hard to understand what they see at school vs. what you see at home. Hopefully you figure out this discrepancy soon!

Somebody has poor comprehension. Might be worth someone taking Psych 101 to understand short term memory. Recall of 9 items from a list of 12, missing only the middle three is really good. 7 is the typical short term list recall and the typical recall pattern is to remember the beginning of the list and the end with loss in the middle.

Comprehension for DS seems to improve with complexity of the book. He's much more likely to say 'I don't know' to questions about simple books but will read and recount complex books with no problems.

That's not comprehension, that's memorization. A kid who takes a holistic view of the world (forest, not trees) would condense the whole thing into "A boy ate some fruit" and move on with his life. There's nothing more meaningful in the story to comprehend.

Early readers with no real meat to them can be very difficult for competent readers to pass the "comprehension" tests on. We use a different levelling system but up to about level 15 (children move on to independent reading of chapter books 25-30ish) I myself often couldn't pass the "comprehension" questions without having another look at the book. Partly this is because when a book is that easy and that boring you don't retain a single word, which doesn't mean you didn't understand what you read... Partly because the "comprehension" questions often didn't even relate to the actual text and relied on having gazed in fascination at the pictures "What colour was mother bear's scarf?".

I have often thought that kids who don't start from "not reading" and learn HOW the teacher wants you to "read" the early readers and respond to the "comprehension" questions are at a distinct disadvantage when being assessed on books way below their level - because they are being tested on skills that they never learned because they never needed them, or they learned and have long since abandoned as no longer being necessary.

We are having a similar problem with math for eldest DD at the moment. She changed schools half way through grade 5 apparently her math skills plummetted... She's not amazing at maths, but she was well in the top 1/3 of her class (at a school with a much higher achieving cohort than her new school). But she has aspergers and has not been able to cope well with the different language used for math at her new school and that she is expected to do math calculations with different techniques. She has solidly above grade average math skills against one school's measure but not another's - because they have different ways of teaching and then measuring success for supposedly the same thing. If she had more flexibility of thinking this would have set her back less, but it is what it is...

Thanks everyone for your thoughts. After having ds read the books sent home and re tell the story, 2 books he could re tell pretty easily. He did have trouble with 1 book about a dog who eats, plays, sits and sleeps. When I say trouble he flip flopped 2 middle dog activities. Yet, in reading the book, it didn't matter what order you said the dog did things (they didn't build on each other at all.) so, I'm guessing that would be a fail, but really he knows and comprehends.

Fun fact about ds teacher- she is very strict, rules orientated, no thinking outside the box, and definitely not gifted- certified. So, I'm not sure how flexible she will be with this.

Zen Scanner- interesting.
Dude- exactly what I was thinking!
Bobbie- I'll keep that in mind.
Mumofthree- your post was very helpful to read! Thank you! I think the fact the my ds is a self taught reader and would have balked at books like these at 2.

I am trying hard to remain positive when really my ds needs a different teacher who understands him.

Mumofthree-
Sorry to hear what your dd is going through with math. It is so hard with language in math. So frustrating when someone KNOWS math, but is confused by new language! Hopefully, she'll learn the new language and move along. Do they also have different math method? That seems so annoying and aggravating to know how to do math, but then have to now learn the method used! I'm afraid when my boys get there!

I clearly remember explaining *at length* why the comprehension questions we got in grade 3 had inaccurate official answers: most frequently that assumptions had been made which were not supportable. Much of that was quite strait-forward, some was some kinda puzzle game I played... things like "Just because only one baby bear was mentioned does not mean he couldn't have a sibling. He _probably_ didn't, but it's not impossible."

Anyway, I managed to annotate EVERY SINGLE QUESTION.

Yeah. That was a... fun... year...

And I wondered why teachers didn't seem to like me. Hmm.

Melessa - yes a different method, and in fact they are expected to demonstrate multiple methods for each skill (ie they must be able to do multiple different types of long multiplication, none if them a traditional method). Most of these methods are clever mental math solutions that make no sense on paper at all. using multiple methods is supposed to deepen their understanding, but for a kid like her it's muddied the waters and confused the hell out of her. She's aspergic and dyslexic, one right way for paper, one or two mental math techniques and LOTS of help lining things up correctly on paper is what she needs (and was working beautifully). Frankly if we could afford to we would be moving her right back to a private school if we could, we just pray she's not too badly set back by a few years at the (well meaning) local public school until she starts highschool (hopefully private).