Parent-Teacher Conferences..aka SEP

I had Jimmy and Emma's Parent-Teacher Conferences today. I usually schedule them for after Russ gets home from work, but with his new work schedule, I made them sooner so I was going before 6:00 at night. Which meant I got to take all 4 kids along with me. Which was fun in and of itself.

Anyway, Emma's went fine. She said she's a "good little girl that gets along well with others. Knows most of her letters, sounds and numbers." She then added, "There's just one little thing we have a problem with." Asked Emma if she could tell me and Emma just grinned. Apparently Emma doesn't do her work. She will sit and look around at everyone instead of working. She will have to be reminded several times to start working (and she will usually grin when she's told to start working but still just sit there). Some things she starts immediately with and gets done really fast. She just seems to get distracted easily, and there is a lot to look at in the room. So her teacher is going to start giving her stickers every day (sound familiar, Stacey?) according to how well she does her work. Green for doing it really well, yellow for so-so, and red for not well. For our part to try to help encourage her, we are going to do the marble reward jar (again, sound familiar, Stacey?) and she will get to add a marble for every green sticker she brings home. In the short time we were talking with her teacher, Emma got distracted several times, so hopefully this will help keep her on task.

Jimmy's went fine, too. His teacher wrote "Jimmy is a great student! He strives for quality work." He is reading on a 4th grade level. He does have three areas of difficulty, but those are part of his current reading level. He is nearly at a 4th grade level for math, but has no areas of difficulty with math. I find it kind of funny that his reading level is higher than his math when he got a better grade in math than language arts. Anyway, I asked his teacher about her opinion with the Full-Time Spectrum. She asked me how interested he is. I said he really doesn't want to leave his friends. She said to have him take the test regardless of if he will go in it or not. Said we would really have until almost the end of the summer to decide for sure and even if we put him in it and he hated it, there would be no reason we would have to keep him there. His goals for this next term involve memorizing part of the times tables and keep practicing cursive lettering. And to do his homework.

That pretty much sums up the conferences. It actually wasn't that bad taking all 4 today. Except that Emma's teacher gave them each a snack and the whole time with Jimmy's teacher Lyssa was trying to get me to open hers. Ah, well.