Re: I'm dreading the teacher conference


bizby40 wrote:
Thanks for the tips. Despite the progress he's made, he's
not a great reader (solidly where he should be according
to his teacher, but so far behind where my daughter was,
it seems behind to me). So we have a tendency at home
to read the things through with, and sometimes even to
him. And we then make sure he understands all the
instructions, even the ones about writing in complete
sentences.

Maybe I should start requiring him to read it to me first
instead and see if he's understood all of it.

If he's not a great reader, this could be why he gets impatient with
the writing exercises. Reading comes before writing.

This was around the age my DD#2 got pulled out of class for reading
assistance. They were concerned because she was starting to slip
farther and farther behind the rest of the class. If you read poorly,
then your writing suffers, and everything suffers because you have
trouble reading the questions. She got more and more frustrated, but
like your DS, quickly learned that being popular was one way to succeed
in school... so she was also a talker!

She had special reading help for about three years, and it made a
*huge* difference for her. Today in 6th grade she's a straight A
student, avid reader, and English is her best subject!! Who'd a
thunkit! Her spelling is still a bit atrocious, but she loves to write
essays, stories, and poems. She is still popular, but has learned to
restrict her socializing to outside the classroom, because she wants to
hear what the teacher has to say. ;-)

If you pursue this for your DS, be sure to first get his eyesight
screened - by an optometrist, not just the school. I was told that some
kids can have subtle focusing issues that won't get picked up by the
routine screens. This wasn't the case for my DD (I suspect hers is a
mild form of dyslexia, because it runs in our family and she tends to
swap letters around), but it's something that should be ruled out if
reading is the issue.


jen

.

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