Everyone got to meat their teachers today. DD starts 4th grade next week and it's middle school. On the way to the classroom, Vice Principal stopped me and reminded me that I was to request a teacher meeting for the first week of school to discuss curriculum and she (VP) would like to attend. She also told me that she discussed my dd with the teacher ahead of time (I don't know which teacher - math or LA). So, After being friendly with LA teacher for a while, she started giving us the curriculum. She let us know that each child is required to read 20 minutes a day. Because many children were not doing this, they are required to do a "writing response" to a chapter once a week. She told us that these should be very detailed with statements and supporting facts. I told her that was great because DD9 is working on being able to support her inferences.
My DD9, who is mostly shy and a people pleaser pipes up and says, "Well, I sometimes read the whole book in one day."
LA teacher tells her that "You must be skimming a not really reading then." You have to slow down so you know the details of the story.
LA teacher then tells us that a lot of kids don't actually read what they say they read.
After a lot of this I told LA teacher that Vanessa did not "skim" and she doesn't lie about what she reads. AND I was very happy that she would be having the practice she needed in summarizing stories. I then turned to DD9 and told her that what the teacher is saying, is that if you read the whole book at one time and THEN do a summary, you might not remember some of the important details from the beginning of the story.
She helped DD open her locker and told her not to worry about opening it right away and that they would work on lockers for a whole week. DD opened her locker right away.
Then we met the Math teacher. I posted a while ago about asking the school to subject skip DD to 5th grade Math for this year. They DON'T do that. Were were going to try differentiation.
So, after really liking the math teacher and her energy, I told her that I would like to set up a meeting to discuss how DD does on the pre-test. I believe that she has mastered much of the 4th grade curriculum and that I would like to understand how they were going to alter the curriculum to keep her progressing. (Per meeting with VP).
I was told that I would not be allowed to see the results of the pretest. She said that there are enrichment activities available for the children who score over 90% on the pre-test and that a score of 98% would qualify her for a parental meeting. (I assume an IEP). She said she sends the pre-test home at the end of the year with the post test. She said that many of the bright kids actually score lower on the post test. (WHAT)!
She told me that enrichment consists of "if she scores 90% on a pre-test in decimals, then she would make a decimal game for the whole class to play."
She told me that homework was not a good way to assess what she was learning in class because she has to give all the kids the same homework.
The correct the homework the next day in class all together and having different homework creates social issues.
So, I said "That is why I was hoping to have her do Math with the 5th graders."
To which she said, "We just don't have the personnel to make that happen."
She said she would send home a challenge packet that DD can work on after she finishes her homework. I told her that didn't work last year, as she never got a chance to work on it. (It was more of the same sftuff anyway.) I told her that DD took an hour and a half sometimes to do easy homework saying that it was hard. DD interrupted me and said..."IT's NOT hard it just soooo boring I can't do it."
I told the Math teacher that last year, one of the teachers gave DD harder homework instead of the regular classroom homework and this worked well and she did it quickly.
The Math Teacher shook her head and couldn't believe that my DD took 1.5 hours on her homework and I was asking for harder work.
She also told me that they NEED the advanced kids in the classroom so the other kids can learn from them!
So when we left, I said, "So, I will be contacted if she gets of a 98% on her pre-test?"
Math Teacher: "I'm not sure why we would do that."
She also said that they are trying to create something that helps the kids who are ahead but they just aren't there yet. That we will have to take the little they offer.
OMG.!!!! What do I do!?
Am I CRAZY! IS THIS WORLD CRAZY!
I must add. She thanked me for opening up this discussion. She also asked DD how she felt. DD shrugged. She asked DD what kind of work she liked. DD said she likes to work on harder things than what she gets.
