Mid Year Report Card

We got Cate's second quarter report card last week. I think it is pretty good - she met about four standards, had only 10 that were where "not yet demonstrated", but 7 of those were new this quarter, and she had twice as many "progressing" than "emerging". Confused?? You should see the report card with its 42 district wide standards saying things like "uses informal strategies to share objects between 2 or 3 people/sets".  Seriously, this thing took me an hour to figure out.  The whole time I'm reading it I'm imaging how long it must take the teacher to assess each of her 20 students in all these standards every quarter. The days of my kindergarten report card with about 5 items including "plays well with other - "Satisfactory" or "Unsatisfactory" are long past I know.

Overall I'm really pleased with Cate's progress as we pass the mid-year point of kindergarten. Here are her accomplishments as I see it:

• She has demonstrated to the teacher she knows 13/50 sight words based on the testing method of 30 words/minute using one stack of card and flipping them. With me using smaller stacks of grouped words like “color words” or having her pick words from cards on the desk – the number is about 25.

• She knows all the letter sounds and can sound out word parts but has still can't put the sounds together to make the actual word.  It may not be on par with her class but I think it is a great start to reading.

• She knows her safety info – including address, city, state, county, country, continent, planet (her own addition to the standard) & phone #
• She knows how to write all the letters, lower case & upper case and more than half of them are legible if she want to write them! Force her to write and you won’t be able to read it.
• She is showing big gains in math concepts, like she knows all her shapes including three dimensional ones like “cube”, “cone”, “cylinder” and “sphere”.
• Her coloring is improving, she is staying mostly in the line & does color blocking.
• She has the expected bouts of stubbornness that result in a “yellow” or a trip to time out but overall her behavior seems OK for a kindergartner who is expected to do a 7 hour day + home work.  In the behavior section of the report card she got one rating of “Area of Concern” for "staying on task" but the other items like “asks questions”, “pays attention”, "follows school rules”, she got satisfactory scores.
• She attends all the “specials” like PE, Music, Art without a para-pro and got ratings of “meets expectations” and “satisfactory conduct” in all of them.

• She is in a typical kindergarten class and she is MAKING FRIENDS!!! Socially her teachers say she has blossomed and her class really watches out for her without being told. She said when they line up they always make sure she isn’t last in line and if she starts falling behind as they move down the hall they say “hey come on Cate” or gently urge her forward - how cute is that?

Here is a video of Cate saying the months of the year for me - I didn't realize she knew all of them and was loving how clear her speech sounds.  Sorry for my very loud voice when you have to turn it way up to hear her very soft voice.  The bobble at the end was Lucy grabbing my arm to see the phone.