Cailey's progress

I am so proud of my girl. We had parent-teacher conferences tonight and Cailey has made amazing progress this semester.  The conference was "student led" ~ which was kind of strange ~ but Cailey did a great job presenting her various school assignments and showing us around her classroom and showing us what she has accomplished in the first semester. But, the meat of the conference was with Cailey's teacher to go over the MAP test scores (evaluation tests). The kids take the tests three times per school year. Cailey's fall scores were very weird and did not reflect her skills we see at home and what her teacher sees at school. We suspect that Cailey was not "focused" when she took the fall tests ~ an ongoing issue with Cailey ~ because she took an unreasonable amount of time to complete the tests and still didn't score well. So, we were anxious to see how she scored on the winter tests after we explained that it was important for her to focus when she takes these tests.  So, drum roll please...

In Mathematics: Cailey's score improved 10% and her percentile increased 26% to a wonderful 94 percentile (percentile equals the percentage of students in the study that had a score less than or equal to Cailey's score). Cailey scored in the HIGH range for Math

In Reading: Cailey's score increased 26% and her percentile increased 331% to an amazing 95 percentile. Cailey score in the HIGH range for Reading!!!!! We are very excited about this one because she has shown little interest in reading ~ it's more of a chore than a pleasure for her.

In Language Usage: Cailey's score increased 12% and her percentile increased 85% to a 78 percentile. Cailey scored in the AVG-HIGH range for Language Usage.

We know not to put too much stock in these tests, but we can't help but feel some relief when the scores improve so drastically. Cailey still needs to work on her focus issues and "staying on task" ~ she has a very short attention span and tends to day dream when she should be doing her school work. Dance seems to be the only thing she really focuses on ~ and she is very serious about dance :o) As many know, we were very unhappy with Cailey's first grade teacher and I am convinced that Cailey's self confidence was compromised when she did not click with that teacher. We are very happy with her second grade teacher ~ this teacher just seems to "get" Cailey and can really get Cailey motivated for school. We are so proud of the work Cailey has put in and she is really growing up so fast. She is a full fledge reader! She says math is her favorite subject and she enjoys going to school (well, most days a least!)