Hi,
My DD5 just started first grade 4 weeks ago. She had a rocky start to kindergarten after an early entrance with predominantly social and emotional adjustment issues. Those appear to have resolved beautifully and now she appears to be sailing into first grade from those perspectives.
However, we have been contacted several times by the first grade teacher, her gifted pull out program teacher and her exceptional ed teacher because she is "not participating in" classroom activities. After much discussion with each of the teachers, it appears they are all seeing different things - I've been told she is willfully not participating, too sleepy to participate, does not like her gifted class, and that she has self-esteem problems and needs social stories to help her overcome her shyness. DD has had several comments from the instructors of the gifted weekend/summer program at the local university that she strongly prefers individual instruction and contributes more to class when given time to think and when the reason for exercises are shared and the relevance is reasonable (their words), and that she needs a safe place to practice using her voice in class. My observation is that her reading and writing skills do not appear to be on par with her classmates and that she herself is noting "I didn't know what the words on the board said." "I couldn't read the question" "I can't read or write like the other kids" "I didn't know what/how to write". Sometimes, it seems to be a comprehension issue. They were asked to write 6 sentences about respect and the teacher was quite frustrated that after 30 minutes her page was blank. DD reported "I didn't know how to describe respect. I could only think of what wasn't respectful." I've also noted that she tends towards perfectionism and will either not start something she's not sure she can bat out of the park on first try or will stop a task she does not feel is going smoothly.
I used a reading software program to reassess her at home and was dismayed to discover that her reading level has dropped significantly - her skills are actually less developed than when she started kindergarten a year ago.
I asked the school if they would retest her (to see if the original test that determined her eligibility for accelerated entrance to kindergarten was appropriate) and they reported that her IQ/ability testing from when she was 3 years 11 months was valid for 3 years and that they would not recommend retesting at this time. She is now 5 years 3 months. I've contacted the local university's education department to see if they would conduct a learning assessment.
Last week, I started putting her to bed an hour and a half earlier, and started daily phonetics/reading at home. We've started reading a few books on perfectionism, problem solving and growth mindset. I'm seeing a change at home but, of course, it's gradual.
We are meeting with all three teachers today. Does anyone have experience/advice on how to approach this best? What can we reasonably ask the school to help with? What else can we do at home?
