First conference

I haven't updated most of the events for the last month. Life has just been so busy (in a good way) and I have had some major computer issues. I've got 3 partially written posts but I thought I'd write about last night. I went to Edens first parent/teacher conference last night. This is the first time she's been tested on academics alone and it's a process but we've got a little bit of a look at where she stands with her typical peers when looking at her from an educational stand point.

Academically, she is all over the place. Her strengths and weaknesses are not surprises to us as we've been tracking this stuff for a while. And she has made gains since her kindergarten screening (you can read some of the results of that here) and since then we've had one IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meeting with her new team. She really has some strong math skills when it comes to counting as she can count independently from 1-59 where they only expect her to get to 19 by the end of the school year. Counting objects are easy for her and she has no issues identifying number as long as they are single numbers. She loves patterns and can complete a pattern pretty easily but expressing what the pattern is with words she just can't do. That's no surprise either.

She's having a lot of difficulty in reading and writing. There is also no surprise with this either. Her teacher knows that she can do more than what she tested if she had some accommodation but again we are trying to figure out the raw scores so we know where we are starting at.  She will be seeing the reading specialist and OT will work more on her writing to try and see if these will help her and get her where she needs to be. We are going to start stepping up her reading at home (which is another unpreferred task and usually not very fun for her or us unfortunately). She did better than expected but still on the lower side with her writing (she tested the letters they learned already) and high frequency words.

 She is becoming a real part of the classroom and work completion is getting easier for her as she is seeing her peers do their work. She is really trying to be part of the class and cares a lot about her classmates. Best line of the night was the way her teacher described her in the classroom, "She's loving and caring to all her peers and really is a good friend. That being said... When Eden gets mad she can get pretty prickly!” I responded with, ”At least I warned you.” She told me that she didn't expect things like that because she can get very mad and frustrated very quickly. She also said that she's glad she isn't teaching her in Middle School or High School because she is going to be a tough one if she is this stubborn now and I agreed completely.

Eden is a very lucky girl to have a patient teacher who listens to her and reads her cues appropriately. I think it's a great fit and I think they are both doing great. Eden has an aide who is wonderful and patient, but also sticks to her guns! Eden gets frustrated with her but she also does what she asks even when she doesn't want to. Eden doesn't like anyone who tells her to do the things she doesn't like to do so it's not surprising that Eden doesn't like her very much!