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Saturday, April 12, 2014

Progress

Our school district uses a 1-4 grading system in elementary school.

  • 4 - Exceeding expectations
  • 3 - Meeting expectations
  • 2 - Working toward expectations
  • 1 - Not meeting expectations
Abby has threes in everything, except for "uses writing conventions" (which in her case means spelling), there she has a two.

Lizzy has fours in reading and threes in writing and math (they don't worry much about spelling in kindergarten).

For behavioral things like "working well with others" they use a different scale. Abby consistently gets very high marks in these, and Lizzy somewhat less so (she has yet to master sit-down-and-shut-up (which they call something else) at this time).

But what I really wanted to talk about here was the Magic Treehouse series of early chapter books. They are listed as Scholastic Guided Reading Level M, and Lizzy is at Level L (which means that she reads Level M with an adult in attendance to explain words she doesn't understand, and to dispense hugs when Jack and Annie are in imminent danger of being buried under ash and pumice in Pompeii on Volcano Day).

I adore these books.

Especially because of the way they explain things in an age-appropriate manner. I was especially amused tonight by eight-year-old Jack's definition of civilization in Viking Ships at Sunrise. He defined it as "Books and art and good manners," and I think that's a great working definition for civilization for the intended age group (also eight-ish). Maybe that's the skill Lizzy needs to work on for the behavioral things above.

Civilization.


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