Parent-Teacher Conference and Vision Screening
Friday, October 22, 2010 by Amy
We had Riley's parent-teacher conference on Wednesday. Nothing really surprising or anything. As her Montessori teacher said, get used to 12 years of boring conferences, because she's a great, smart kid! She is advanced in reading, which we already knew. Even the things she has to work on, we already knew.
One aggravating thing she does is totally ignore spelling and spelling clues. As in, if a math question is "12 monkeys went to the zoo, blah, blah, blah" she should be able to spell "monkeys" correctly, because it's written right in front of her face. Instead she writes "mynkys" or something like that. Argh. Miss Foster says that she just loves writing so much, and is so focused on it, that it's hard for her to break her concentration in order to figure out spellings.
It's really just amazing what goes in to running a first grade classroom. Rudi was highly impressed and is very confident in this teacher. I think she's great too!
Oh, Miss Foster also showed us some of Riley's writing samples, and it is quite hilarious what she writes about! Just the little things that happen in our home, that we think nothing of, are the focus of long stories that she writes. She wrote a loooong story about the new hermit crab that we bought and had for 2 days before it died. Of the four samples we were shown, three were about the hermit crabs LOL! The other was about us having a mouse in our house and getting mouse traps and how the cat and dog set the traps off. So cute! But also makes me nervous about what else she might write about us :)
We seem to *maybe* be getting along in the speech department. Miss Foster just told me to stop in one morning and speak to the speech therapist. She said that perhaps she isn't explaining the problem well enough, especially since Riley is new to the school and the classroom, and that I may be able to offer further insight in order to get things moved along. I had planned on stopping in on Monday to talk to the speech therapist, but now Riley has an optometry appointment on Monday, which brings me to...
...her vision screening results. According to the school test, she has 20/50 distance vision in both eyes, and 20/25 near vision in one eye, and 20/30 in the other eye. The near vision isn't a problem, but apparently the distance vision is. We made an appointment for the optometrist for Monday morning. Riley is really freaking out. She does not want glasses, and wrote me a long letter in which she stated very clearly that she would NOT wear glasses, and that she will throw them in the street if she gets glasses, etc. Then she worked herself into such a tizzy that she made herself sick. She was telling Rudi yesterday evening that she wasn't feeling well, etc. and he is such a soft-touch that he was ready to keep her home from school today. No way, buddy! After almost 7 years of living with Riley, Rudi has still not realized that Riley is rarely sick-sick. 95% of the time, her "illnesses" are anchored in anxiety, not some deadly virus! I spoke to Riley, and just as I expected, it was rooted in anxiety over the vision thing. I told her that we don't know if she needs glasses yet, that we're getting a second opinion, and that even if she does need glasses, she wouldn't have to wear them all the time, just when she needs to look at things far away. She was comforted by that, but was still a little anxious this morning. I think she feels that the school betrayed her. Riley acts as if what happens in school is private. It's not just the regular "what happened in school today?" "nothing" exchange, but she seems to feel that what happens in school is her life, and is none of our business. Hard to explain. Even if she confides in one person, she makes is clear that it is still a secret and not public knowledge. Like the time she was upset because she had a substitute teacher. She told me, but expressly forbade me from telling anyone else. Simply that the school sent a letter home about her vision screening is a huge betrayal for her. Poor kid!
One aggravating thing she does is totally ignore spelling and spelling clues. As in, if a math question is "12 monkeys went to the zoo, blah, blah, blah" she should be able to spell "monkeys" correctly, because it's written right in front of her face. Instead she writes "mynkys" or something like that. Argh. Miss Foster says that she just loves writing so much, and is so focused on it, that it's hard for her to break her concentration in order to figure out spellings.
It's really just amazing what goes in to running a first grade classroom. Rudi was highly impressed and is very confident in this teacher. I think she's great too!
Oh, Miss Foster also showed us some of Riley's writing samples, and it is quite hilarious what she writes about! Just the little things that happen in our home, that we think nothing of, are the focus of long stories that she writes. She wrote a loooong story about the new hermit crab that we bought and had for 2 days before it died. Of the four samples we were shown, three were about the hermit crabs LOL! The other was about us having a mouse in our house and getting mouse traps and how the cat and dog set the traps off. So cute! But also makes me nervous about what else she might write about us :)
We seem to *maybe* be getting along in the speech department. Miss Foster just told me to stop in one morning and speak to the speech therapist. She said that perhaps she isn't explaining the problem well enough, especially since Riley is new to the school and the classroom, and that I may be able to offer further insight in order to get things moved along. I had planned on stopping in on Monday to talk to the speech therapist, but now Riley has an optometry appointment on Monday, which brings me to...
...her vision screening results. According to the school test, she has 20/50 distance vision in both eyes, and 20/25 near vision in one eye, and 20/30 in the other eye. The near vision isn't a problem, but apparently the distance vision is. We made an appointment for the optometrist for Monday morning. Riley is really freaking out. She does not want glasses, and wrote me a long letter in which she stated very clearly that she would NOT wear glasses, and that she will throw them in the street if she gets glasses, etc. Then she worked herself into such a tizzy that she made herself sick. She was telling Rudi yesterday evening that she wasn't feeling well, etc. and he is such a soft-touch that he was ready to keep her home from school today. No way, buddy! After almost 7 years of living with Riley, Rudi has still not realized that Riley is rarely sick-sick. 95% of the time, her "illnesses" are anchored in anxiety, not some deadly virus! I spoke to Riley, and just as I expected, it was rooted in anxiety over the vision thing. I told her that we don't know if she needs glasses yet, that we're getting a second opinion, and that even if she does need glasses, she wouldn't have to wear them all the time, just when she needs to look at things far away. She was comforted by that, but was still a little anxious this morning. I think she feels that the school betrayed her. Riley acts as if what happens in school is private. It's not just the regular "what happened in school today?" "nothing" exchange, but she seems to feel that what happens in school is her life, and is none of our business. Hard to explain. Even if she confides in one person, she makes is clear that it is still a secret and not public knowledge. Like the time she was upset because she had a substitute teacher. She told me, but expressly forbade me from telling anyone else. Simply that the school sent a letter home about her vision screening is a huge betrayal for her. Poor kid!
