Teacher calling for parent teacher confrence for my youngest boy :(

[welsummerchicks]

Each kid learns each thing at different rates. Every single kid is different. Some of them have a 'hump' they have a hard time learning specific things in specific years of school.

For example, I know kids who learned the alphabet very easily but had trouble putting some of the sounds together. Other kids have trouble with getting straight vowel sounds and how they change in specific words.

Unfortunately, teachers don't have much choice, kids pretty much are expected to learn things in the same setting and at the same rate.

But there are SO many reasources out there. There's Sylvan, which is fantastic at coaching kids how to get over the 'humps' they encounter.

I was just amazed, a few months ago I met a lady who tutors reading and I told her how I used to help kids in school. 'Oh we don't do it that way any more, there's a much better way to teach those sounds'. I felt like a dummy! For about one second then I was fascinated as she explained to me how she teaches.

Of course the other thing to keep in mind is that quite often, what holds kids back in second grade is hearing or vision problems. It's just about time for those issues to start cropping up. Sometimes a meeting with a hearing specialist is a good idea.

And sometimes there's a kid at school bullying them or there's a specific school related problem, such as embarrassment about gym class or something like that, which keeps a kid tense and not concentrating.

I think it would be GREAT to have a conference with the school. Then you can get some new ideas about what to do. Even if they get held back they don't necessarily get held back in all subjects or miss anything they actually like.

At this time of the year, too, they may not be sure they want to hold him back. If they do want to, I think the important thing is to emphasize it just gives him extra time to pick up certain things - remind him Albert Einstein got held back. The kid I tutored, I told him, the way he learned, he needed more time to learn to read, not that he couldn't at all, just some people need more time. I told him we would have fun reading and do something useful with it.

The important thing is that he's happy and has things he's interested in doing. Those interests can always be made a part of learning. I recall one boy who was behind in reading, we assembled a race car. The teacher about dropped her dentures when she saw him reading over those complicated directions, he was explaining it to me, LOL!!!

 

[WriterofWords]

Quote:
Don't worry, I understood you. We have multi-grade classes but they are the bilingual classes. I've taught monolingual classes that were mixed grades too. Generally when a student is held back they go into a different classroom, not stay with the same teacher so they aren't redoing the same information taught the same way. Depending on the size of the class and if the district has the money for an IA, it can work well. But too many kids at different grade levels with one teacher I would worry about the quality of time they would be able to spend with each grade level and each student at that level.
You have to find out what the issue is to be able to fix it with any child.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Our school was very small and there were 2 multi-grade classes(my daughter was in one). It does take a talented teacher but worked wonders.

Sylvan is pretty expensive.
What about pairing your son with kids in his class that GET the subjects and let them explain things in different terms.
My son and his friends wanted to play when they'd get together, but if anyone was struggling with a subject, I had them tutor each other first to get over those humps. That technique also worked with high school seniors I worked with in a foreign exchange program. Often kids speak the same language regardless of whether that's English or something else.

I agree moving to the next grade without the info from the previous grade can lead to failure later.

I did a lot of adult education in technology. Some that didn't GET it would act like they did because of peer pressure.
That led to total failure when more difficult/advanced information was given. If they would have just said they didn't understand early on the entire program wouldn't have been lost on them.