Parent Teacher Conferences

Well, I had parent teacher conferences today and they went great. Here's what the teachers said:

Markie
Markie's regular teacher said that she does really well. She listens great and is very polite and quiet (the quiet part shocked me, lol). She has a few areas she needs improvement in. She needs to practice writing her letters and numbers. She likes to write a few of them backwards. So I'll be working with her on that. Her speech teacher said she is still working on the F's with Markie and won't be moving on to another area until she has tackled the F sound. Which I thought was a good thing, I don't want her to get too overcrowded with too much at one time. Her reading recovery teacher said that she has improved a lot in her reading. She pulled out a book that she said that Markie read very fluently and thought that was wonderful. She said she has a little problem with spelling out the words as she hears them or says them, that has something to do with her speech. If she says "with" but with her speech problem she actually says "wivh" and that's how she spell it. So she needs some improvement there. Every night I sit her and Ricky down for about 1/2 hour and we go over reading, spelling, math, bible verses, etc. So for right now I am going to focus on her writing out the alphabet and numbers since she gets those backwards sometimes and reading and counting by 5's and 10's, etc. The teacher had each kid color a folder for their papers for parent/teacher conferences and Markie drew some numbers and letters and our phone # (which she wrote the 7's backwards, lol), but I was so proud to see that she drew a big cross (as in the cross of Jesus) on her folder. That made me smile!

Ricky

Ricky has improved so much since he started school. He's IEP teacher said that he is doing good and trying his hardest. She notices that he sometimes get distracted during math which causes him to mess up his math problems because he starts counting...loses thought...begins counting again and by that time he is off base. I've seen this at home too. And he sometimes has a hard time "getting" things. You will explain something to him, he'll "get it" and then the next day he lost it again. I think it's a part of his cognitive impairment. We'll just keep working with him on it. The teacher said that she thinks as time goes on, he will overcome a lot. I know he will because he's got us to help him :) One of the things his regular teacher said made me want to cry (out of happiness, of course) that in the beginning of the school year she said he would just sit back and be real quite and wouldn't participate in class discussions even when she would call on him. Now she says she's seen a real difference in his self confidence and he is a very active person in class discussions and he gets excited about participating. He's come out of his shell and I'm so happy for him. So now, I plan on doing a lot of focusing on Math with him. That seems to be a little difficult for him, but I have found a few systems that work for him. A number line has helped him a lot and the touch point system. I feel kind of bad about the touch point system because I didn't know that it was an actual learning tool and just thought it was some weird way of doing math that Mark had showed Ricky. Every time we would do math Ricky would start the doing it the touch point way and I would tell him not too, because I thought it was confusing...well now I have found out that it's an actual learning tool and not something that Mark made up on his own and his teacher was using it to teach him (meaning Ricky) math. So now I feel like I've been telling him not to do something that his teacher was telling him to do. Oops! Well I know better now, lol.

Anyway, that's how they are doing and thanks for reading!!