Boring ol' day

Nothing exciting today. Although, after school I did have an interesting little chat with Emmie's teacher. I don't know what to do. Part of the problem is the class itself is so overwhelming. There are so many students in one classroom, first of all, and second there are so many students with issues-be it behavioral or educational. We ironed out a few details. For example, many people think when you ask Emmie to read something of grade level that she can actually read and comprehend it. Don't get me wrong, sometimes she can! However more than half the time she is making it up as she goes along. For example, let's say she's reading a paragraph and comes across the word "our" (for some reason she can not remember that word). Because she doesn't know that word, her brain is going to work over time in that short window to come up with an O word that she does know...so the word may look and sound to her like "out". So, if the sentences was, "That is our house" she reads it as "That is out house". Assuming she can remember "that", "is" and "house" as the proper words. I just think CAPD is hard to explain and hard to understand. I can't give the teacher a list of all Emmie's "symptoms" because there are too many and some we discover daily. I am hoping we have ironed out our differences and can work from here.

Homework today was boring. The classroom homework was to read a passage for fluency. The story was a level 3.0. Seriously? We are barely getting through a level 1.8! It's a passage from the "Read Naturally" Series, about a paragraph long and the students are timed while reading then a score is marked on the number of words and the number of correct words. We read the passage sent home a few times with miserable results. Finally, I pulled the mom card and said NO way are you reading it again! It was to painful to watch her struggle through the entire passage. So, I put that one away and pulled out two 1.8 passages to read. Ahh, much better. Out of about 119 words per passage Emmie scored at about 40 in one minute with an overall 117 words correct. I have to start somewhere and I pray the teacher understands. We also practiced our spelling words-this week is going to be difficult! Subtraction flash cards, math workbook page for reinforcement, and story time. Boring! I don't think she learned one thing from homework and I do not like that at all.

I often wonder if I know what I'm doing. Sometimes I feel like I'm clueless and flying by the seat of my pants. I pray that I'm not totally screwing this up!