“A joy to have in class”

Did the Parent/Teacher Conference this afternoon with Ms. Snider. Various observations:

1. Katherine came in reading distinctly above level, and is still above level. She’s pushed Katherine a bit because of her enthusiasm over reading, but her group is pulling a little ahead of her, so she’ll probably be doing some reshuffling in a few weeks to get her into a group closer her level. Biggest problem are her sight words right now.
2. Very (most) enthusiastic over math.
3. Takes a lot of pride in her work.
4. Learning a lot about writing sentences.
5. She’s really “grown into 1st grade.” When she started out the year, Ms. Snider thought Katherine was going to be a real “Chatty Kathy” kind of problem, but she’s really gotten good about following the rules and behaving and focusing on her work. Though she still needs to learn to keep the talking down during independent study.
6. When asked what she did best, Katherine said she was good at helping, at PE, and at art. What did she feel she needed most help with, it was doing her handwriting. (Ironically, her writing and handwriting have improved massively since August).
7. Her speech teacher’s comments were on how she’s being a “hard and happy worker,” working hard on tongue placement and movement, and on getting her /ch/ sound right.

Overall, both her teachers seemed happy with her, and so are we.