Wow, the last few months have flown by! I'm going to try to make a better effort to blog our 2011-12 year better. However I am happy to report that this year we passed! Roman and Hope are doing excellent. Bethany continues to struggle with reading. We believe she may have mild dyslexia. We will be switching up her curriculum a little this upcoming year to see if we can find a good fit to get her back on track. Still, even knowing how she struggles in reading, she still more than passed 1st grade! We are so proud of them. Overall it was a fantastic first year. Not without it's struggles and frustrations, but nothing majorly concerning either.
Funny story though... James always seems so cool and laid back when it comes to homeschooling the kids. I'm always the one obsessing over it. So when it came time for their final evaluations last week I was actually very calm with it. It was a huge transitional year for us and we have been traveling extensively these last 3 months with little formal school work done so I was of the mind set that it is what it is and I'll accept whatever outcome. James seemed fine. Then the test scores were presented and we discussed B's possible learning disability. He seemed fine in the room. He left before me - no surprise I'm the talker of the family! - and took the kids to the van. I get there and the kids are hysterical and crying and he's clearly very upset too and I'm like, what the heck is going on here?!?!
Well, we don't use a standard "public school" test instead we use a one on one evaluator. The test they are given is a universal test that ranges from 1st to 10th grade. They basically take the test up until the point they don't understand the questions and are evaluated accordingly. I specifically chose this format last year for Roman. Roman is quite advanced and we wanted a good assessment of his true level, particularly in math where we knew he was well above his then 4th grade level. Since this test spans several grades it was the perfect match for us. Well, because this is a different style test it grades differently too. When he saw our kids test scores in the 20 and 30 percentiles he flipped! Completely freaked out with a PS mentality. Our kids failed. I failed. I failed our kids. That's all he could see. I had to calm everyone down and explain that NO our kids PASSED and passed WELL at that! LOL Bethany's 23% was exactly on target for passing 1st grade. Roman and Hope were actually above average for their respective grades. This test spans across 10 grades, how can you expect a 1st grade to "pass" at 80% or higher on a test that 10th grader is supposed to take and pass in that range as well? Ohhhhhhhhhhhh! Didn't think about that. LOL There is a section that she converts their actual test scores to a PS equivalent as I had to point out..... see all these 100+ numbers in this column? That's their ACTUAL PS scores! Yes, 100+ as in surpassed the expectations of their respective grades almost across the board! Whew, it was a bit of a nightmare, but once it was all out we were able to cheer up and celebrate the end of a great year!
Everyone is looking forward to another great year
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