Some Days Are Better

Some days are better. After my son's almost totally non-compliant day at school last week, we managed to turn things around through a combination of a stern talking to, a CD player in time out, and the return of the CD player as a reward for better participation in testing at school. He's still not 100% on board with all of this academic testing during the summer, and frankly, if I were his age, I wouldn't be either. He deserves to have a summer break like every other kid instead of being tested 3 hours a day, 4 days a week for 6 weeks because his teachers screwed up the past two years. So we get some grumbles, and we do some convincing, and we try our best to make something fun out of something that just isn't, no matter what you do.

But on the bright side, he has been showing his summer teacher that he can do everything his first-grade teacher said he couldn't and then some. Here's a short list of what we have seen so far:
1. He can sight read any word he is shown, even words years beyond his grade level, provided that the words are in large print.
2. He can spell anything he is asked to spell.
3. He can read large print sentences independently and correctly answer questions about their content.
4. He can match those large print sentences to corresponding illustrations from books.
5. He can listen to stories and informational texts being read to him and correctly answer questions about their content.
6. He can identify the missing number when one is left out of a sequence.
7. He can count using ten frames.
8. He can add sets of ten frames.
9. He can identify 3D shapes (including pyramid, rectangular prism, cube, cylinder, and sphere).
10. He can identify which shapes have particular numbers of faces, edges, and vertices.
11. He can do "math facts" -- adding numbers from 0-20 in his head.
12. He can identify a penny, nickel, dime, quarter, and dollar when shown the words or the monetary value.
13. He can add the value of sets of 3 and sometimes 4 mixed coins in his head.
14. He can identify fractions (1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/10/ and 1/12) by picture and by number.
15. He can compare all of these fraction values using greater than and less than symbols (<  >).
16. He can correctly use capitalization and end punctuation in sentences.

His summer teacher's summary: "He can do everything I have asked him to do, if he wants to do it."

And this is the kid who, according to his first grade teacher, cannot read, cannot do math, and really does not know anything.

We're grateful to have a teacher who has dedicated herself to enabling our son to show what he knows rather than assuming that he cannot possibly learn because of his disabilities.