Softball, Siblings, & Education

This past Tuesday was Shaling’s first softball game of the season. She was so excited about it that according to Brock, she bounded down the stairs that morning wearing her softball shirt, shorts, her knee-high softball socks, and a visor. She was r-e-a-d-y to play. He did talk her into taking the visor off and changing her socks for school, however.

I was unable to watch her first game, because Preston had a track meet in Riverton. Therefore, I unfortunately do not have any pictures to share. Hopefully I can get some tomorrow (Friday), as she has a 7:15 make-up game.

Last night, Shaling told me about a conversation she had with a girl at school. Apparently, this girl mocked Preston and then told Shaling to tell Preston that he is crazy. Shaling reports that she told the girl no, that she wasn’t going to be mean to her brother. That is SUCH a victory to me. I’ve always considered the true sign of a solid sibling relationship to be when one has the attitude that “I can pick on you all I want, but if anyone else does, it’s us against the world, Brother/Sister.” I was unsure if or when that attitude might be woven into the fabric of Shaling’s relationship with Preston. I’m thrilled to know it’s there.

Finally, we met with Shaling’s E.L.L. teacher yesterday. Mrs. Bivens is amazingly sweet and compassionate. She seems to truly enjoy working with Shaling. We met with her because I was curious as to how and when the transition to grades instead of Pass/Fail was going to be implemented. In a nutshell, what I discovered is that it’s going to work anyway we want it to work (more about that later).

What I found fascinating was seeing Shaling's language progression put into numbers. It’s obvious to anyone that she has made amazing strides, but as is typical of many of us Americans, there is something concrete about seeing scores.

Her language was assessed with a standardized sort of test in January 2011 (in order to place her in E.L.L. services) and again in January 2012 (to determine that services were still needed). She’ll continue to be assessed in January each year. The test is broken down in to Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing. Each individual score and her composite score are out of 6.0.

                      January 2011                         January 2012

Listening                1.0                                           3.2

Speaking                1.0                                           1.9

Reading                  1.0                                           2.4

Writing                   0.4                                           3.0

Composite              0.6                                           2.7

So, she has gone from a .6 to a 2.7 out of 6.0. That seems terrific. And that was done in one calendar year. She’s had another 4 months to improve even more, so I’m certain her score would be even higher, especially when I see how she’s writing now. She will need to score a 4.8 before it would be determined that E.L.L. services would no longer be needed. So proud of her for being more than halfway there.

She believes that Shaling is currently reading at about a 2^nd grade level. Brock and I would agree with that assessment, which is fantastic, because she wasn’t even reading at a 1^st grade level at the beginning of the school year.

As far as grades go, we’ve asked that she start getting letter grades in Spelling. She’s doing extremely well on her spelling tests and we believe that she needs to start being held accountable before she loses her motivation. She will remain Pass/Fail in other areas, but we may explore the idea of her getting letter grades on specific assignments, especially in math (but only when story problems are not involved) or anything that is pure memorization.