Wednesday, July 01, 2015

Well that answered my "now what do I do?" question

Today is Wednesday, which means that Lydia has math tutoring.  This is one of my favorite parts of the cyber school.  I don't have to pay for the extra help she (or any of her siblings) needs in math.  She has really come a long way with the tutoring, and is regaining confidence in her skills after a really bad time with the math curriculum our local public school used when she was in 4th grade.

Today also meant that I spoke to QDA about a couple things.  We've been discussing switching the kids' curriculum from the online options to Calvert (for all but Melissa, she isn't eligible to do offline curriculum because of her IEP) and I sent the e-mail to our supervising teacher on Monday about doing that with Kim along with an issue I was noticing in a big way with Jordan.  Kim's all set to start 4th grade with the Calvert curriculum this fall, which makes her very happy.  Jordan, well let me dig into that now.

Jordan has a September birthday, and Ohio states that the cutoff date for school is September 30th.  That makes her the youngest in her class/grade each year.  She's always done pretty well with her schoolwork, but we've struggled sometimes with lessons that take longer than she is capable of sitting and focusing for.  We chose Little Lincoln 2nd grade when we enrolled her in QDA after they did placement testing to see where her skills were at.  They felt she'd be ok with 2nd grade this past school year based on her scores, but I was concerned about her maturity.  The maturity issues started about 5-6 weeks into the curriculum, and only got worse from there.  She started slowing down and struggling more each day, until we reached the 2nd nine weeks when the curriculum started cursive.  At that point, she screeched to a halt and it was taking us 4-6 weeks just to finish 1 week of assignments.  Her maturity had completely caught up with us at that point.

Academically, she absolutely is ready for more difficult work.  Emotionally, she's very much not at that place.  So, we discussed the issue at hand.  This has been something I've been in close contact with the school about, as we tried to find ways to keep her engaged and moving forward in her lessons with the hope of finishing within the 12 months.  We've watched her struggle with her inability to really sit still and complete longer assignments that are more complex, tiring with writing more each week.  She simply just wasn't ready for the level of work.

We made the decision together that she will repeat second grade this fall.  They also determined that we need to switch her curriculum (which I agree completely with this).  She no longer is using Little Lincoln as of right now, that order has been cancelled. They are now processing an order for Calvert second grade materials, and as soon as we get her materials and I've become familiar with it she will begin.

So far, she seems totally fine with the fact that she's repeating second grade.  Scott had to repeat third grade when he was in school, and she knows this.  He will be able to give her the encouragement that she needs to keep going instead of getting mad and giving up because she feels defeated.  He'll be able to help me combat any thoughts that she must be dumb for having to repeat a grade.  Scott is going to take her out for an ice cream cone this weekend to talk to her alone and make sure she's doing ok with this information.

So, looks like I get to spend time getting familiar with a new curriculum very soon.  That will eat up a good amount of my free time.

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