We got back the spelling test.

[conuly]

(Y'know, I don't count spelling tests and whatnot like Eva'cdotes, but I do hope she doesn't get annoyed at 16 or 20 when she finds out I posted all about them years ago!)

They've been working on digraphs (two letters, one sound), and she got four of her words wrong. Once again the note "Study your words" which last week annoyed me but this week really pisses me off for two reasons.

First, Evangeline studied her words by writing them into her homework notebook. Each word (and there are 20 of them, 10 that she has to know by heart and 10 that she has to recognize by sight) 4x each the day before, in addition to completing the week's worth of homework. This was IN HER HOMEWORK NOTEBOOK. Her teacher checked it, so she must know the girl studied.

Secondly, Evangeline got the "tricky" parts of the words (the parts with the digraphs) right this week. It was the vowels she got wrong. Obviously if she's writing "nack" and "shad" for "neck" and "shed" study more isn't the answer - right? I mean, that should be clear to everybody! She also got "whin" for "when", which is how we say it, and "shas" for "such". I don't know what happened there.

In her "I can sound out words using this digraph" part she spelled "children" correctly, despite not having been taught it AND ALSO having that pin/pen merger that messed her up with when... but she spelled last week's word chick as "ckie".

In other news, every single thing she reads, I now make her retell me. I close the book and ask her to tell me back the story. And today we got an official note explaining how assessment is conducted... and somebody please translate for me!

"In order to judge comprehension, students are asked to retell the text and then answer comprehension questions. Students need to give a strong retelling or answer three of the four comprehension questions correctly in order to read independently at that level. Students may use the text to help them retell. Each assessment has two literal questions and two inferential questions at each level. The child must answer at least one inferential question at these levels, as readers at higher levels must be able to make inferences in order to understand their texts." (You know, when I copy things out like this, I'm really grateful I know how to type!)

What sort of question is an inferential question? I know what an inference is, but what sort of question makes them use inference to figure out the answer?

Anyway, today she read a chapter from Frog and Toad All Year, the one about spring. And when I asked her to retell the story she gave a huge sigh, to which I said "Look, your teacher thinks you can't do this, which is why she's sending home easy books for you, so clearly you need to practice". Thereupon she proceeded to recite the story in excruciating detail, though with a preponderance of "he" this and "he" that instead of proper names.

I'd be convinced she's turned over a new leaf, except just yesterday we read a Fancy Nancy book and she retold the story in order of importance instead of sequential order, making it all sound a bit confused. And you know, she really can't read made up, unfamiliar, or foreign words. She can read very long words like "spectacular" and "masterpiece" and "overjoyed" without blinking, but she stumbles and repeatedly slips up on proper names "Shau-Yu" and "Bree", and consistently read "extra" as "extremely" because, y'know, that made sense and started with the same few letters. That's consistently even after I stopped her and had her break up the word into parts.

I ought to have paid closer attention sooner.

Ana is working through multi-part word problems with, if not exactly ease, at least aplomb. Which is more important, for her - she tends to trip up on things that are easy for her because she panics and starts to overthink.

Also, she confided to me today that she's not really doing any assigned reading in class because the teacher doesn't have any books on her level. So she just picks what she wants from whatever bin. I'll admit it, I was proud. Not that it's any of my doing.

Edit: And about the "neck/nack" and "shed/shad" spelling errors, it'd be convenient to blame the teacher for having a funny way of saying those words, except that she made that same error with me over the whole of last week. That's not the issue.

Comments

[kyrielle]

I ought to have paid closer attention sooner.

And her teachers ought not assume she hasn't been studying because she isn't doing well. Especially when the evidence is in front of them. They should, in theory, know how to spot issues and be able to say things like "How much does she study? How is she studying? I'm concerned that she doesn't seem to be mastering this properly, and I'd like to determine if it's study habits or something else."

Heck, even just leaving off all but the first sentence, at least she wouldn't have started out by putting you on the defensive, which tends to shut down the ability to analyze the rest of it!

[conuly]

One teacher with apparently years and years of experience, two assistants (though they may be aides for specific children...?) and a relatively small classroom of 21.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

An inferential question would be like the one you asked about why Frog sewed the buttons on and gave them to Toad - something that wasn't explained in the text, so she had to make an inference.

Her vowel errors may indicate that she's not really clear on which short vowels make which sounds - which is sensible enough, because they aren't very consistent, and most of them sometimes blur into the damn schwa - but maybe a little more discussion and practice with them would help.

Some of her errors seem to indicate that when she hears a word, she can't reproduce the order in which she heard its component sounds - thus shas and ckie.

Do you use ASL? Something that may help would be to teach her the deaf alphabet, and teach her to sign the letters as she's sounding out a word. Another game would be to cover words with a card and sound them out while revealing one letter at a time, which could help get her out of the habit of guessing words by their general appearance.

Did you ever play a game called Simon, where you have to reproduce an increasingly complex sequence of tones and lights? I suggest you find some fun, non-electronic games that work on that concept of sequence - "what comes next?" and "what came before?" - plus songs like There's A Hole In The Bottom Of The Sea, where one has to remember a long sequence in order.

[conuly]

*thinks*

You know, off-topic (I'm very tired) but I wonder if Evangeline has the schwi like I do....

[failstoexist.livejournal.com]

For our reading assessments, the inferential questions will vary depending on the level of text, but they will include things like "Why did this character think that x would happen?" or "how can you tell that x is important to this character?"...things which are pretty apparent to people who can read and understand the story, but aren't explicitly stated. Except we do 6 questions, but our assessments are for older kids at a somewhat higher level. I've given the assessments for younger kids and they're similar.

Eva should know her spelling words (if they're the same ones she's practicing) --regardless of what she hears when the teacher says it, she should be practicing with the correct vowels. Maybe have her look at the words, cover them, and write them, and then compare them to the true spelling. Find a way to study that doesn't allow her to keep getting them wrong, because that's where she's getting screwed up for the test. If she practices it as nack or shad, she will spell it that way on the test, even if it's not the right word.

It may point to a difficulty with vowel sounds, either with hearing them and discriminating them, or knowing which sound goes with which letter. But it also means she's not studying in the way she should be. If she's getting different words on the test than the ones she's studying all week, then it's an issue of some sort of vowel sound knowledge and that should be addressed.

[conuly]

I never let Evangeline look at her words when she's doing her spelling homework. I say it, she writes it. If she has a problem, I say it again. She rarely has problems when she's practicing them at home. She got nack and shad when spelling at home, and when I said it again carefully with the sound stretched, she fixed it on her own.