We then shifted pretty seamlessly into the academic issues. .....Find the right motivation, and watch out! I think I was also able to get across that sometimes if you're asking about a particular concept and expecting a certain explanation--especially in math--you're not going to get the standard second grade answer. This was particularly relevant when you're asking why 2 + 4 = 6 which is the same as 4 + 2 = 6. To our DS it's obvious. It's just not always easy for him to express the obviousness!
JB
JB, our DD6 (also in gr 2) is having this same issue with math. How can she explain something that she has intuitively known for at least a couple of years?
When we discussed this with her teacher the response was one of confusion. She didn't understand that this was the issue, she thought that DD was simply not doing the work and didn't understand how to explain her work. I'm not real sure she really believed us either when we said that DD just doesn't know how anyone could not know that those things are the same.
Is DS doing a 2nd grade reading curriculum or is he in a different class for this?
We are having the problem that DD is being required to read the 2nd grade reading book stories 4times a week with the class! After having read it once she can tell the whole story, complete with different voices for different characters. When we asked about it, her teacher told us that she needs DD to help her out with the kids that are having problems reading! We said that she was not a junior teacher and she needed to have more challenging reading work. So, teacher started giving her chapter books and reading assignments from them, but she is not letting DD work on them in class because she is afraid of how the other children and their parents will react when they see DD doing different work! We said we understood, but that it was not being fair to DD to be giving her more work simply because the teacher didn't want to deal with some difficult parents. We're still working on this issue. Any suggestions?