Teacher Conference

Whew what a night. We had our teacher conference tonight.

We watched Whitney read from a FIRST grade reader. It was amazing. The teacher has started using a colored gel (green) for Whitney to read through. She showed us how with no color - Whitney struggled, with blue - Whitney Struggled, with GREEN - Whitney read the whole sentence. It was freaky but very cool. Need to look into that more and why it works. It has something to do with correcting perceptual distortions while reading. It has been used with Dyslexia and other reading disorders.

Articles:
http://www.aoa.org/x5418.xml
http://irlen.com/index.php?id=3

Whitney showed off the iPad to her teacher. I think it is time...Whitney needs her own to take to school. She was doing some amazing things like writing letters on the iPad. Her teacher was pretty impressed.

More reading!

Whitney has "at" words down! Sat, cat, bat, mat...and she gets that they rhyme. She moved on tonight to -ash words - mash, bash, rash...reading them all.

Wow, wow, wow.

Reading!

What an AMAZING night. We saw Whitney sound out words for the first time. She really got it...C...AT....CAT! Word after Word after Word.

Whitney is also really close to beating the toilet training challenge. She can do it all herself if she wears elastic topped pants. Well, she won't do it for us yet, but it won't be long. Her teacher stands at the door and gives her verbal prompts, but Whitney does it all. She is still on a schedule, but she has had no accidents for two days! Yay!

I am constantly amazed at this school and her teacher.

First Day of Second Grade

Summer is over. I'm a little sad. It was a nice summer with lots of time with Whitney. She started second grade this year. After a lot of hand-wringing about our redistricting to a new school, we got approved for out-of-area status at Longleaf, where Whitney has attended for three years. The principal at Longleaf fought for us with the district to keep Whitney with them. The advocate we engaged helped us understand the process, but the real thanks goes to Longleaf.

Whitney was so excited to start back to school. She put on her new backpack, wanted to greet everyone she saw, and was so happy to see her teacher, Mrs. Stanley. She found her new cubbyhole with her name all by herself, and saw some of her friends from last year. There are some new students in the class, and they seem really high functioning, which is great for Whitney.

She was a little apprehensive when I went to leave, but I'm sure she was fine two minutes after I went out the door. I, on the other hand, am a bit sniffley and sad. I'll pick her up today, see how the day went, and appease my need for hugs and kisses.