Madie has successfully completed first grade. She really liked her teacher, Ms. S. In a report card today, she found out she will have Ms. Sp. for second grade. Here are some of the transcribed items from her report card:
Reading
- Strengths: Madie is reading independently at level 24, which is the expectation for about mid-year second grade. She reads with expression and meaning, paying close attention to what is happening in the story. She can both answer literal questions about the text and infer from subtle clues. She can retell the story in broad strokes and remember small details. I celebrate Madie's skills and how much she has learned this year.
- Challenges: In second grade, Madie will continue to learn how to write books. She can talk very sophisticatedly about what she has read, but we need to help her capture her thinking in her writing. Please make sure that Madie reads every day this summer to maintain all the progress she has made this year.
- She exceeds expectations for comprehending fictional stories
Writing
- Strengths: Madie writes imaginative and creative series books about fictional characters. She invents funny and interesting problems for her characters and imitates the styles of authors that she has read. Her use of dialogue, details, and "sparkly" words make her stories come to life. Madie's spelling and phonics are also strong, and she is experimenting with different kinds of punctuation to convey meaning.
- Challenges: I hope Madie will continue to tell and write stories over the summer. Her work this year exemplifies the connection between reading and writing: her strong reading skills support her ability to write compelling stories. I am truly impressed with Madie's writing, and look forward to reading more of it as she grows.
- She exceeds expectations in Message/content
Mathematics
- Strengths: Madie is a thoughtful and confident mathematician. She is a creative and sophisticated problem solver, and is flexible about choosing the most efficient strategy to suit a particular problem. She is solidifying her understanding of place value, and can efficiently add and subtract numbers on the decade (for example: 20+4 or 70-20). She can interpret graphs and tell time, and is working on identifying coins and adding them together.
- Challenges: Sometimes, Madie thinks she knows a math fact, and so she tries to reason about it, but since she has the fact wrong, her reasoning goes astray. For example, she might say 8+5=14, because 8+4=13. This summer, keep practicing the basic facts, and have her double check by counting on or back to make sure that she knows what she thinks she knows.
Social Studies
- Narrative: Madie was engaging in learning about migrant farm workers and how we can help. She posed thoughtful questions and ideas during our discussion. Madie's connections and insights definitely raised the level of our class discussions. She wrote part of her group's presentation and shared it with other classes with poise and confidence. She was also able to answer challenging questions that the older students had. Great work!
- Exceeds expectations in Social studies content
Learning Habits and Skills
- She consistently worked independently, seeks help when needed, shows respect for others, accepts responsibility for self and belongings, strives for quality work, actively works well with others, actively works well with others, listens responsively, and expresses oneself effectively.
- Strengths: Madie is such a conscientious and mature young person. She cares deeply about doing the right thing, both in the sense of following the rules and being a good friend and student, but also in a moral sense. She is also a very sophisticated thinker and her thoughtful ideas and questions help us all think and understand better. And for all that, Madie has a great sense of fun, and knows exactly how to be silly when it's appropriate. She has been a joy to teach and I will miss her next year.
Areas of Focus
- Madie is an incredibly well-adjusted and mature child. I don't anticipate that she will have any challenges as she transitions to second grade.
Great work, Madie!
