A third grader!!

I think the best way to start off this return to blogging is to talk about the start of this school year.  I'll probably take a trip down memory lane in future posts but for this one lets talk about our new school year.   The decision was made at the end of last year to promote Cate to third grade.  Since I'm all about being honest on this blog I will tell you Cate is not by any means ready for most of the general education third grade work.  I think she ended last year reading at a 2.1 level (2cd grade, 1st month) or a level G if you do the alphabet method (an average end of year second grader would be heading to an M if I remember correctly).  Cate made significant improvements in math during her second grade year but at the end she was still only adding single digit number and just starting subtraction which is well below the general education classrooms.  But with the IEP process and the fact that she made significant progress during the year, promotion with an IEP was an option we were given.  We weighed the pros and cons of promotion and decided that moving forward was the best course of action.  That decision allows her to stay with a group of classmates that she has been with since kindergarten, does not affect her confidence (she completely believed that it would be "bad" to have stayed in second grade), and gives her new challenges and material to continue to grow. 

Our school has moved to an integrated teaching model so Cate is in a co-taught classroom.  For those of you not familiar, this means that her classroom has both a general education teacher and a special education teacher working together to teach a combined class of typical, IEP, and special needs students.  We were in the same model for second grade but since was new to the school it got off to a kind of rocky start.   Cate has an amazing team for third grade that is made up of an experience general education teacher and a second year out of college special needs student.  In my opinion the combination of the two gives the classroom the necessary order and rules with an enthusiasm that can only come from youth.  These two teacher so far have shown seamless communication, great preparedness, and the desire to help Cate succeed.  We are hoping for a good year in third grade but it won't be easy on any of us I know.  But we'll be up for the challenge, won't we?

First Day of School Pics!