About three weeks ago, the principal at Rita's new school called a "Student Study Team". The principal organized for her teacher, the school psychologist, the school learning specialist, the special education teacher and the district administrator for special programs to be at the meeting.

We did the same activity as we did last year with Rita's old school. We identified her strengths, strategies attempted, new information, new or continuing concerns, new strategies, and then who & when would take action on the strategies.

Since then, I've also met with her teacher as part of parent-teacher conferences. The school has started to implement all of the ideas that were discussed. Four days a week she has a language specialist who spends 30 minutes with her on general classroom activities and language development. Additionally, she meets with a reading specialist for 30 minutes four times a week. The approach they are taking at school is to start her at the basics so that there are no gaps in her learning. At the start of the year, she had tested end of kindergarten / beginning 1st grade reading so her teacher is also having her do reading in class with the 1st graders and the teacher says that she is holding her own.

As for math, she tested 50% for first grade math. Most of the problems she missed had to do with money, symbols and questions where there was reading involved. So the strategy here is that she will take math with her 2nd grade classmates but her homework will be at the 1st grade level. (Apparently the 1st and 2nd grade programs mirror each other with 2nd grade just being a harder version of 1st grade.) Again, they want to make sure that there are no gaps in her learning. She does her 1st grade math assignments very quickly so we are going to see if she can make up some time. On Fridays, she takes the same math test as the 2nd graders ... the teacher has the kids doing 'lightening rod' math and it's designed to see how fast they can do relatively simple math. It takes Rita longer than most of the 2nd graders but she usually gets it right.

Her teacher also has her doing a special computer program when they have computer time called "Discovery English".

Since she is coming into the school district as an English Learner, she needs to take special state testing every year to monitor her progress. Because she's a bit older, they will have her take tests in four areas: reading, writing, listening and speaking. They are going to try to get this done sooner rather than later so we have a good baseline to review her progress.

A few fun things we learned from these sessions:

1. On Fridays they have "5th grade reading buddies" and they have paired her up with Nadia, a girl who came to America from Russia with her parents about four years ago.
2. The first prize that Rita selected for a day of good behavior was sitting at the teacher's desk.
3. Rita enjoys volunteering for lunch duty and the reward for that activity is lunch with the teacher.

Due to #2 and #3 and the observation that she likes to be in the front of the line, with the teacher, etc. they are going to do two things - make her be in the middle or end of the line sometimes. They also want to encourage her leadership interest and build confidence by giving her teacher's helper status for some projects and programs. It was discussed that she needs help with some basic social skills and this would allow her to observe her classmates interacting and encourage her to model their behavior.

Her teacher also nominated Rita for a Monday afternoon program with a local high school student. So every Monday after school she will meet with her high school buddy for 1.5 hours to work on math, reading and special projects.

All in all, we think her new school is great and giving her even more help than we would have imagined.

Last night she wrote her 1st school essay by herself!

I like my dog
my dog is happy
my dog is very funny
my dog is brown
my dog has two ears
and my dog runs