Parent Teacher Night

On Monday we had our first real Parent/Teacher night. Tony and I both had appointments with the classroom teacher, the Hebrew teacher and the sports teacher.

When we got there we were scheduled to see the sports teacher first, but of course, as these things usually go, everyone was running late. We actually saw the classroom teacher first and got a low-down of how Josie is doing in class. We were told that she is a bright and happy girl, very eager to learn and loves the activities and being with her friends. She said her attention is getting better focused and she is doing amazing things with her writing/journaling and spelling.

We were given her journal to have a look at, and her worksamples folder to take home.

Her journal was simply incredible. Each page had a drawing and a sentence underneath. She was writing (by herself) things like "I went to the park with my cat Zelda and I had an ice cream". And on a couple of pages "I went to Rachel's house and Benny hurt me" ;-) I am sure it was not unprovoked. We were just blown away with her writing and spelling!

Her worksamples folder included various assessments she had, to test her pattern matching and comprehension and counting etc. It was incredible to look at. We were meant to go through all the assessments with her at home and fill in an evaluation with her. Below are her Comprehension Q's and after that the evaluation questions we filled in together.

Comprehension Questions

Who is the main character in the story?
a chicken

What is the little red hen baking ?
Bread.

Why do you think the animals didn't want to help the little red hen ?
He had so many stuff to do.

Where do you think the story takes place?
In a book.

Where do you think all the animals are?
In the story.

What do you think the story is trying to teach you?
Reading.

Seriously.

Those were her answers. No joke. Its stuff you read about on those emails you get sent from 5 different people in the space of a few hours.

Evaluation Questions

What am I most proud of?
Me doing good work.

Did I achieve my goals?
Yes.

What would I like to improve on?
Painting, learning & I want to do 'going to school' better.

Hehe..

Anyway.. so after the classroom teacher we saw the Hebrew teacher who also said that she was doing very well, was recognising letters and sounds and words. She asked us if Josie was using hebrew at home at all and we told ehr that 80% of her awake time is spent singing. In hebrew, in english, in Josie-nese.

After that we managed to grab the sports teacher but he was't able to tell us much. With so many kids he really had no idea who was who, all he could tell us was that so far in Kindy, he had noticed no kids with any problems with any of the skills they were learning.

So that was our first Parent/Teacher night. It was good to hear how she was doing.

And to finish off, here is an exchange I had with Jose a couple of weeks ago:

I had bought her a Dora umbrella. We all know how much she loves Dora. Or so we thought. As I handed her the new umbrella, her face fell and she said: "You know mum, it doesnt have to be Dora ALL the time!!".

And then she rolled her eyes at me.

When did she turn 13?!