Today was Joshua's first parent/teacher conference. We scheduled it for 7:40 am so that Brian could go too. We had to roll both boys out of bed and get the dressed quickly so that we'd make it on time. It was a very good conference. He's doing well in both Spanish and English. His teacher said that he is picking up the Spanish really well and uses it a lot in class. (I keep telling him that he and I are going to make one day a Spanish Only day and I'll just talk to him in Spanish...he's not too excited about that idea). We got his progress report and he's already met or surpassed the End of the Year benchmarks in some areas...he reads 22 out of 30 Spanish sight words (the EOY benchmark is 15) and has 28 of 33 letter sounds (in Spanish)...the Mid year benchmark is 22 and EOY benchmark is 26. His knowing the names of all the letters in Spanish isn't so great, but considering that he's only been learning them for 1.5 months, he's not doing too badly. The only thing he was low in was rhymes in Spanish...in English, that's not a problem. In Spanish, it's a little different. One of the assessment forms that Yisenia, his teacher, showed us showed that sometimes he tries to rhyme and English word with a Spanish word. So I need to see if I can find some books at the library that are rhyming in Spanish. I can't just think of Spanish rhymes off the top of my head. In the Math section he's also doing well...His met the EOY benchmarks for ordering numbers to 31 and doing AB patterns. He's been counting to 100 in English for months, now we just have to get him doing it in Spanish. The EOY benchmark is 31. He can sometimes count that high - just needs a little prompting. They did a writing sample recently (I hated grading those things when I taught). He had to do it in Spanish. All he wrote for it was Me gusta (I like) and drew a picture. He knew what he wanted to say, but didn't know how to write "playdough" or "puppet theater" in Spanish and for writing samples, the teachers can't help the students with spelling or anything. His writing was nice and spelling correct, but since he hadn't written a complete sentence or story, he didn't score very high. But if he'd been doing it in English, it would've been different. They have a word wall in the classroom (an area of the wall where high frequency and other words are posted in alphabetical order corresponding to each letter...I guess that's kind of redundant) and he knows how to use it and will look there for the words he needs before he asks for help which shows that he's learning how to find things on his own instead of just depending on someone to give him the answer. So all in all we were happy. I'm very happy that we put him in the Immersion program...some days I have my doubts (especially when it seems like he's one of the very very few that only speak English instead of the half and half we were told there would be), but when he's already surpassed many of the end of the year benchmarks in Spanish, it makes me wonder what the English benchmarks are and how he'd look with those...I think they're quite similar and I think he'd have met many of them already too.
This past Sunday was Brian's great-nephew's blessing over in Woodland. Brian's dad flew up for it - since it's his first great-grandchild. So we were over in Woodland for the majority of Sunday and then again last night to have dinner with Grandpa Val before he left.
Joshua refused to let me take his picture with Brian and Nathaniel, but he let me take a picture of him by himself and then finally let me take a picture of all three generations together.
I need to go work on craft fair stuff while Nathaniel is sleeping and Joshua is at school. I'd like to think that Nathaniel will sleep a long time since he got woken up before he was ready, but I'm sure the three hour nap on Friday was a fluke!
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