We got back the spelling test.
Nov. 9th, 2011 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
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.
