Year-End Academic Evaluation
For Gabriel Pett
First Grade
May 20, 2011
OVERVIEW:
Our focus this year hasn’t changed with the three R's (reading, writing, and arithmetic) and sprinkled in science, social studies, music, art, and sports. We’ve enjoyed our involvement with NEACH homeschool group to do fun activities, projects, field trips, park days, spending time with friends and experiencing children of all ages.
MATH:
He continues to excel in math and is working above grade level. He has most of his multiplication tables memorized and either recites or writes tables of them daily. We haven’t entered into division yet, but when asked, “what is 2 x __ =22” He has no problem saying the answer of “11”. Earlier in the year (January) I asked him how many steps we had on our stairs. He counted 14. I said, “what if we had two sets of stairs side-by-side, how many stairs would we have?” He said “hat's easy just add 14+14.” I said yes, or you could just do 14x2. He says, oh yea, and without hesitating he said 28.
We intersperse reviewing his basic drills such as double and triple addition and subtraction lest he forget everything he learned last year. We identified Mondays as “Monday Math Review” days.
We ended up returning the “RightStart” math curriculum because it was too teacher restrictive. Classes are offered to learn how to teach this curriculum along with the Spell to Write and Read curriculum and determined that it was too intensive for us along with liking to be a little more “free” in our approach. We’ve grown to really like the Harcourt Learning workbooks we get through the Homeschooling section of Barnes & Noble and may stick with those for a while.
LANGUAGE ARTS:
(According to the American National Council of Teachers of English, the five strands of the Language arts are reading, composition writing, speaking, listening, and viewing (visual literacy).
Reading and Comprehension: Gabriel is a fluent reader now and is reading on a second grade level. We’ve finished two reading workbooks (McGraw-Hill and Harcourt Learning) with comprehension questions this year and he is eager to buy the next level. His retention is high and when asked can dictate to you the main “take-away” from the story along with most details. He can respond with complete sentences if asked, otherwise will provide fragments as answers which makes it difficult to understand him. He still only likes to read 2-3 pages and his attempt to read a real chapter book from the library was an unsuccessful one. He read 1 chapter a day and didn’t complete it. He is beginning to understand prefixes and suffixes and will attempt to sound out any word he doesn’t know without hesitation. He also participated in the Discovery Channel / Six Flags over Georgia reading program and earned two tickets to Six Flags this year. We continue to frequent the library for story time and to check out new and exciting literature.
Creative Writing and Handwriting: His penmanship for print is clear when asked to write neatly. We have begun the early stages of cursive and hope that it will make it easier to write for him. Our big accomplishment this year is his “O’s” are now drawn in the correct direction. He occasionally makes mistakes like reversing his “b’s” and “d’s” and “p’s” and “q’s” as well as sometimes “s’s” and “2’s”. He catches his own mistakes and corrects them. As for composing sentences and writing them, he has extreme difficulty. This is the one area that he may be on or behind grade level. We have changed curriculums from the Flashkids Harcourt workbook to “Writing with Ease” to see if we can have a breakthrough in this area. Only a few weeks underway, but there is real promise with this new program.
Spelling, Phonics and Vocabulary: Gabriel enjoyed a Spelling Bee competition this year. We are using Harcourt Spelling workbook and he does the work without any problems and is on grade level. I give him periodic spelling quizzes which he likes and he does very well. We haven’t given him a set of vocabulary words to memorize or learn yet. He's not shy about asking what a certain word means that he's never heard before. We bought him a new dictionary and showed him how to look up words by himself. We finished Explode the Code workbook for our phonics work and breaking down words. He enjoys this.
Grammar: He understands nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns, as well as synonyms, antonyms and homophones. He also understands to capitalize letters of proper nouns like names and places. He is gradually learning sentence structure, but again writing sentences is daunting.
Listening and Speaking: One of the other concentrated efforts in working with Gabriel is getting him to listen better. Sometimes he seems to be inside his own head and world and doesn’t listen well. He is a happy boy and doesn’t do it out of defiance. We’ve pointed out times when he doesn’t listen and is making incessant noises. He said he didn’t realize he was even doing this until we pointed it out. Now we make him recite a times tables and place his hands in his lap so he can exert some self-control. There are a lot of times when Gabriel speaks he begins with fragments and in the middle of the story. We’re explaining to him that he needs a beginning, middle and an end to clearly communicate. He gets excited and does not communicate well although he is confident speaking in groups or for presentations.
SCIENCE:
Gabriel loves science and is a fan of Jamie and Adam and the entire MythBusters crew. He works in his Science workbook, but mostly we read science, nature, human body, and physics books to him. He has an interest in the weather and talks about seasons, etc. And will occasionally teach me a thing or two about something he has learned (i.e., a marble will stay in a funnel even if you try to blow it out).
SOCIAL STUDIES/GEOGRAPHY:
We celebrate various holidays to study traditions and he enthusiastically marks off the days of the week on the calendar. He completes map snaps online http://www.coolmath-games.com/0-series-geography-map-snaps.html. Last year he studied continents, and this year was focused on countries such as USA, Europe, and Asia.
PHYSICAL FITNESS:
Jim works with him on golf, soccer, tumbling and tennis while I work with him on dance. He just finished swimming lessons and we’ll continue through the summer so he can be a strong swimmer by summers end. He is finally growing and becoming faster than he was last year with the additional height. He has exceptional hand/eye coordination skills when conducting activities such as golf, catching balls, etc., but is average with large motor skills such as swimming, running, etc..
OTHER:
Drama/Music/Art: He loves to play charades, monopoly or any other computer or video game. We have fun doing crafts, but is not gifted in the arts in terms of drawing. He can color inside the lines, but struggles to come up with other creative ideas on his own. We were given a piano and plan on finding a piano teacher for next year.
FIELD TRIPS/EVENTS:
We hope to do more field trips next year now that our youngest is two years old.
· Horizon Theatre’s production of “Madeline’s Christmas.”
· “Barn Dance” with NEACH group.
· Scripps Spelling Bee with LEAD homeschool group.
· Exploration of Nature at “Big Trees Forest Preserve” with Dunwoody Hive group.
SUMMARY:
In our opinion, Gabriel is working above grade-level in certain areas such as math, on average-to-above grade level in reading and below level in writing and communication skills. He is bright and has an easier time remembering ideas he’s learned through subjects he’s interested in and a harder time on subjects he is not. He has a hard time focusing on what he is supposed to be doing with staring out the window and dropping pencils, unless it's the television or computer screen. We are concentrating on trying to help him focus and listen better. We conducted first grade CRCT sample tests on our final day of schooling for reading, language arts and math. He scored 100% on math and 92% on L.A. and reading, respectively. He said, "They were easy, and actually a lot of fun!" Overall, he has a love of learning and doing new things, is quite social and tremendously enjoys his friends, telling jokes and having fun.
His first grade curriculum. Mostly Harcourt Learning Series.
