Destined for Greatness

GREAT NEWS! I received the positive progress reports for Dylan and Ryan.

This is a second progress report for my older son, Dylan. Believe it or not, he received all OUTSTANDING in all of his academic classes. That even included telling me that he had improved one grade higher in his reading-- the beginning of 3rd grade reading for the first grader. That means he jumped from second grade to third grade within 18 weeks ! His teacher even made a positive comment about him, "What an avid reader!" I would agree with her because he has read over 32 books since December. I thought it was pretty good considering he is a full time first grader. He is a cheater because his mom (me) is a teacher. Isn't he lucky?

Even though he did earn many outstanding reports in his academic classes, I did see that he got few "Good" on his elective classes such as Art, Music and P.E. For his P.E. class, he nearly got "Need Improvement" because he got "Good minus." Clear and loud, he would rather to use his brain along with the books! Who wouldn't argue with him for his motivation for education more than Physical Education???

As for Ryan, he did not get his first progress report because he was in a full-time special education class. He just joined his mainstream classes for Language Arts and Math. His Reading class is his BEST subject! Almost all Outstanding on his reading part, except for reading comprehension. I thought it was pretty good for a start. Not only reporting to this good news, he, who is in Kindergarten, is now reading at a first grade level.

Both of his Language Arts and Math showed that he got many "Good" reports. I considered it pretty good for a special education student. Since he is an exceptional student, he still needs to work more on patterns and sorting. From the mainstream teacher 's report, she said, "Ryan is able to make great patterns. When I started adding three parts of patterns, it threw him off." I would not blame him because I am not very good at logic either. Guess it had something to do with traits!

Another thing from his mainstream teacher mentioned he needed to improve on "Staying on Task." Do you know why? His teacher commented, " He tries hard on all his work and is making lots of friends. He does need prompting to go on to another step in a project, to get back on task, or what to do when he is finished. He gets excited to talk to other students and other adults in the room." OH MAN, he got another traits from me-- being a chatterbox! I could see my mother in law saying in signing, "See it runs in your "crazy" family."

In Ryan's progress report, it also included the first part of his Individual Education Plan (I.E.P.) benchmark. Ryan had his I.E.P two months ago. Believe it or not, he met six out of seven goals within two months! One of the benchmark is substantial progress when given letters,words, and sentences from a written model/dictation. The goal is to make 90 % accuracy. So far from the special education teacher's report, "Ryan has made such great growth in his area. His average is 71 % overall accuracy." Not bad because he just started learning to use cursive a few months ago.

Without a doubt, my husband, David and I were VERY PROUD of our sons, Dylan and Ryan. We also hoped they would continue enjoy learning many new things. But let's hope they would not become Nuclear Scientists.