Parent-teacher conference

We managed to actually attend our parent-teacher conference for Jordan today, before all school-related activities closed down from the snow.  It was great!  Miss Wodrich was a keen observer of Jordan's strengths and was optimistic and constructive about the areas in which he has more room for improvement.  She said she really enjoys having Jordan in class, that he's funny, and that in particular, he asks fantastic questions during science discussions.  She can always count on him to take it to the next level, apparently.  Is that not a terrific skill to have?  We love that.

He is also strong in math, which we knew.  (Yesterday he figured out what 20 + 11 is; he said, "Mommy I know that 20 plus 10 is 30, and then eleven is one more than ten so I figured it must be 31 because that's one more than 30.")  And he is well integrated socially.  The areas where he has more work to do are reading and writing.  These are both fine, above the state average for his grade, but somewhat behind the targets for the advanced class he's in.  Miss Wodrich said that he is very good at sounding out unfamiliar words, and he has a good attitude.  (I say Miss Wodrich has a good attitude, too!  I appreciate that she knows what he is good at and is building on that.)  We can help by setting up a more structured routine for him to read to us regularly at home (right now, this just happens if we're all in the mood).  Supposedly the reading will help with his writing, too.  He's enthusiastic about writing (I have yet to post the pictures of the book he authored and illustrated last week!).  Now we want to help him step it up in terms of consistently putting spaces between words, using spelling that we can understand better, writing letters forwards, and so on.

Three cheers for first grade!