Amelia's parent/teacher conference

I went to the PT conference last night - only 15 minutes, but I thought I'd share a little about it.

Her teacher is young, 4 years out of school. She's not as well-known by the other parents because she suffers from comparison to the Reception teacher the year before, who is apparently the kind of teacher people write books about. Oliver will have her some day! Anyway, we think she is great. There are ELEVEN kids in the class. I'm still shocked over how much individual attention each child gets. I gave her teacher a ton of positive feedback about that but even so I don't think she took much credit - she just doesn't understand why you would do anything else. She said "Well, they're all very different aren't they?" Exactly!

Some comments about Amelia:
- very confident speaking in class, absolutely loves show + tell. Really likes feeling like the 'boss' of the class during her 5 minutes (surprise, surprise)
- affectionate with friends, well-liked in the class
- has a strong sense of justice that really stands out. After hearing a story or two I took this as a euphemism for "can be overly sensitive when she feels she's been wronged." Her teacher said that Amelia recovers well when she takes the time to talk to her about what happened.
- becoming confident now in her writing. She said she was very reluctant at the beginning of the year compared to all the children who did writing last year, but now she seems to feel comfortable. She showed me examples of writing in her writing journal and I was quite amazed! Her spelling is still not a strong point but she was writing some pages full which I haven't seen at home. There was one report on a field trip they had that must have been 5 sentences
- here's a shocker: Has the best cursive handwriting in the class. Um, what?? We don't see any of this at home, where Amelia's messy print is gradually reducing in size but looks totally average. She showed me her handwriting workbook with rows and rows of beautiful script letters - b's, q's, r's, etc. Crazy.
- Reading is exceptional, her teacher is now after half-term starting up a Reading Journal for her in addition to my parent log. After each book Amelia will draw a picture and write a bit about the book. She will also continue to give her the Year 2-3 comprehension packets a few times a month. She doesn't assess Amelia's reading level since she's clearly past the Year 1-3 reading scheme, so she just lets her pick her books from the Year 3+ school library.
- Strong in math- teacher discovered how comfortable Amelia is with place value and will now be giving her the 3-digit work rather than the 1- and 2- digit work the other kids are doing. She also said "she seems to really love mental maths - I give the children questions while standing in line sometimes and Amelia seems to especially enjoy this."

She took me through her Social Studies workbook, Science, Maths, and Literacy. Each one has writing, projects, drawings, etc. Get this. EVERY SINGLE PAGE that Amelia has done has an invididual response from her teacher commenting on something she wrote, or a drawing, or engaging with her on a thought she shared. All positive. Even simple things like "Amelia, I can see that you really paid attention during the medial e lesson - your spelling is very well done. You've used 3 words with medial e." on a page where Amelia was describing her weekend.

When looking through her class work, I paid attention to the quality of the work and it's all good; in other words Amelia is taking her time and not being sloppy. She clearly loves doing it and she's getting positive feedback on an individual basis. Things like drawing 4 different kinds of houses, writing the names, and then a sentence about which she would like to live in.

Overall comment from her teacher was that she's a great kid to have in class who focuses well and only occasionally gets too excited (but always for a good reason she said). She said "the thing with Amelia is just making sure to keep her challenged." She's starting the book report journal, moving her up in maths, and giving her more reading comprehension work. Overall a good start to the second half term!

And....now I want my kids to always have 11-child classes!!!