Friday, February 02, 2007

Increased Expectations

So Hyperion is in 1st grade. He's a smart little boy. He grasps math concepts almost intuitively. His teacher says his vocabularly is shocking. She says he always knows the science answers (well, it is earth science which is my "specialty" so I would hope so).

However, he needs special help in reading. He just isn't "getting it". I agreed to the tutoring, whatever. He isn't made fun of and he doesn't mind it. But I've been paying special attention to the books he reads, especially for AR (accelerated reader). I told Mr. Gaia that it looked to me like it was right where he should be based upon how easily he was reading the books at the 1.8+ level.

At the beginning of the semester they tested the kids' reading levels. Today we got the results. He's at level 1.6 - that means he tests at the average level for a 1st grader after 6 months in school. Let's see, school started the middle of August, it's now the beginning of February (and they tested in the middle of January) which by my math means that he's now been in 1st grade for 5.5 months.

So he needs tutoring because he is right where he should be?

1 comment:

Tanya Brown said...

This does sound odd. Does his teacher have any specific details, something that would be more helpful than the very vague description "he isn't getting it"?