Soooo we had the meeting today.
To sum it all up - somethings were agreed to, others were not:
- Reading assessment will be re-done tomorrow. They will start on a reasonable level and test up instead of down. I am also to send in the books he is reading at home. They will also test on that to get a full picture. Turns out the teacher from last year (her and I had personality clash and she didn't seem to like Aiden) neglected to keep his reading file up to date so the teacher this year just went according to that.
- The teacher and the deputy headmistress will have a meeting with Aiden this week to explain the school terminology, why he cannot get homework and why he should speak up about what he wants. They will try and remove his fear around the discipline methodology that they use.
- They are keen to give him mini projects in line with his ability. This will be extended to all the kids and this will supposedly give them the scope to do as much or as little as they want. It seems it will not really have formalised requirements.
- They will NOT go deeper in maths (fear of gaps being detrimental later on); if he can do all the stuff the other kids do he will then be allowed to do something more complex. But only at pace of classroom. So if they are counting to 20 he may count to 100 sort of extension. And he has to prove he can do the other stuff first. I gave his teacher a list of the basic maths stuff he does well and am compiling a list of the maths he still needs to work on, and she said she will try slip some of the other stuff in to "test" as per the school's requirement.
- They blathered on again about the essential-ness (is that a word?) of cutting, glueing and colouring.
They also said that from second term (Semester), this class will be more like a Grade 1 setting. Writing and intro to spelling included. This starts mid April for us.
I am giving them three weeks to implement and see results with this. If things are not substantially better both at home and with his passion for learning, I am demanding a grade 1 trial basis. If they refuse even though it's not working, we will pull him and homeschool. I think that then no one can accuse me of not jumping through every single hoop required of me.
Thoughts? Comments?
