I won’t get on my podium about standardized testing and assessments cause that would be a long read but let’s just say that I feel we experienced a case of the assessments over-inflating my child’s abilities. There is a difference between a child’s capability and their developmental readiness. Although my child assessed at a certain math level did not mean that he could fluently perform at that level. He had never been exposed to math beyond 3rd grade so how was he to do math at a 9th grade level? This school year has been a trial and error of math. The first program was good for about 6 weeks then I saw his eyes glazing over. I figured it was a developmental thing so backed off and took a complete break off of math for 2 months. With the required state testing coming up, I looked up sample 5th grade math questions for him to work on to see if he fell short on any of it. Nope, he was fine. So I started looking up the standards and picking through what I knew he and I never worked on. No problem. So I started to venture into pre-algebra and stumbled upon the order of operations. Something he had learned in the past but never practiced. Now this is a kid who wants to do things fast. His brain works fast and if anything takes any amount of time to figure out he bows out. I gave him a problem and had him re-write every step. I thought we would go toe to toe over it but he did that with ease. When I assigned his math for him to work on at school and I told him to go step by step he looked at me and said “I like order of operations! I like writing it step by step because I like seeing it go from this big thing down to the answer.” A-ha!!!! Break through! That was music to my ears! He is now ready for algebra:)
This school year has been like trying to shove an elephant through a mouse hole. So many different hurdles came up and he has overcome most of them. Not with ease, mind you. So much growth has happened this year and I hope it carries over into the next but in the meantime, “Summer! Bring it on!”
scatterbrayned 