I probably will sound like an gushy idiot, but I wanted to share:
DS has a really nice teacher.
We just had our first parent teacher meeting yesterday and she is just great (reg. classroom tchr.). She let me ramble on and ask lots of questions. She has allowed her handful of gt kids and some others who are fast workers to have a folder which they can work from/on when they have finished up their regular work. He has decided to work on his comic book that he has been trying to develop at home.
She is working with ds on specifically - 'how can we make this fun for you so you don't get bored but you still get the work done that you need to for me?' She seriously had this conversation with ds. Apparently he was at a loss for words, which is pretty unusual. He said he'd have to think about it - LOL!
Ds is doing very well as expected in writing and reading, spelling, science, social studies. Math is still a bit of a puzzle for him in some ways, though not too bad. She was really reassuring that she would work with him especially when it comes to multiplication, really open to any ideas having to do with making some of the learning visual and even physical (kinesthetic - my new big word I learned this week, right after metacognition
She is even ok with my sending in specific suggestions for this so that is really exciting! She asked if I thought ds would do better on any timed work in a quieter place - hallelujah. Yes, he would indeed.
Fingers crossed that this continues !!
ps, I got a great tip on this forum about touchmath, but any additional ideas for more visual or kinesthetic methods of teaching specifically multiplication/division would be much appreciated! Or any thoughts on touchmath as relates to multiplication would be good - I could definitely see it working for addition/subtraction, but wasn't so sure about the next level.
http://www.touchmath.com/
