I’m sooo proud of her!
Posted by Dory @ Lucky Dorito on Thursday, March 20th, 2008
Ok, ok. I suppose a slight retraction of yesterday’s post might be in order. A little one, anyway.
The same ornery child that set my last few nerves on edge that day before Thanksgiving made my heart soar Tuesday! Last spring, as a young 1st grader – Luby had mono and it truly worked a number on her. She went from being right on target with all the other 1st graders in January, right after the Christmas break was over – to being way wayyyy behind in April. So far behind, the school suggested she would not be able to move on to 2nd grade!
Of course, although her dad and I were alarmed that 1) we didn’t see it happening sooner and 2) the school didn’t see it happening sooner …. we (us as parents, her teachers and the principal) felt the best course of action was to plan to hold her back. I couldn’t see sending her on to 2nd grade if she was NOT ready even if I didn’t love the idea of that. She was both sad and discouraged, although we worked hard to ensure her that it wasn’t the end of the world! If she hadn’t been sick for so long, she might never have had a problem but… we were dealt a different set of cards – so we, as a family, would work together to get her back on target.
So we hired a tutor (a teacher from her school) for the summer to work with her a few times a week and we really cracked down on reading more and more with her over the summer. She actually even grew to love it each evening, instead of fighting me tooth and nail.
It was a long summer. She knew that she had to work hard to be ready for the 2nd grade placement test at the beginning of the school year. They agreed to retest her after tutoring to see where she was, not wanting to hold her back if she was ready to go on but not wanting to send her on ahead if she was NOT ready.
She passed the placement test just fine, but was still behind compared to other students. The school here uses the STAR Reading program and on August 23, 2007, she was reading at a 0.9 Grade level - which means 9th month of Kindergarten (as I understand it – someone correct me if I’m wrong on that). The second STAR Reading test was given on December 6th, 2007 and she was then reading on a 1.8 grade level (1st grade, 8th month).
That means in just a few months, she had made huge progress! We were thrilled with that and only encouraged to work harder. The little bit of momentum she had really proved to her that she COULD DO IT and she bounced around like a ping-pong ball! It did wonders to boost her self-confidence and with that, she hit the ground running!
The 3rd STAR Reading test results came in Tuesday. You know it’s going to be good if I’m blogging about it, right? The results: Reading at a 3.1 grade level! Woo-stinkin-hoo!! You go girl!
Needless to say, we celebrated with a trip to Dairy Queen last night!
Filed in Doryworld, Kids, Life, Me |
