Midyear Evaluations

This week was midyear parent-teacher conference week at AJ's school. The midyears are by request only, not required. AJ's teacher did not request a conference, but I did. I always do. I can't imagine not taking advantage of a chance to get a better picture of what's going on or to let the teacher know you're paying attention.

My agenda this time was minimal. I wanted to see how some of the organization/behavior issues were going. I wanted to find out what exactly was happening with the school reading groups -- AJ tells us very little and I haven't worked with the reading groups on my volunteer days in a while. But mostly, I wanted to find out what on earth was going on with math.

The news was mostly good -- very good. The behavior issues seem mostly about maturity and the fact that AJ will always take an opportunity to act silly/crazy if someone else is acting that way. This is mostly limited to one other person and they've been separated, so that is going better. We will probably always have organization issues -- AJ's just not a natural. But he's trying. We've been making fewer after school returns to school to find lost homework. He's reportedly keeping his classroom supplies in better order. He has good days and bad days, but there's progress. At home, I see him taking more responsibility for his work. I don't have to remind him quite as much. The things he does daily, he does well. He still struggles with the once-a-week things, since they aren't as securely fixed in his routine.

The reading news was great. I got to see the book he's been working on, one of the "Dear America" series. AJ loves it and it's challenging enough, especially when combined with a series of questions he has to answer at the end which require him to pull out information from the novel and analyze it after he's done reading. This week they'll be starting a Louis Sachar novel that I'm not familiar with called something like "Sideways Tales from the Wayside School." We also got to see a portfolio of his writing, which was wonderful. They are doing a lot more writing than I thought they were -- little comes home, so we didn't realize what they were doing. There were scads of essays, short stories, poems and other types of creative writing.

It turned out, though, that it was good for me to be concerned about math. AJ's teacher showed us a sheet of midyear evaluation scores. Everything was 100% or higher (spelling has extra credit options) except for addition -- that was about 50%. Why was this score so low? Part of it was because AJ didn't read the instructions. When he sees things he thinks are too easy for him, he doesn't bother to make sure he knows what to do. I see this on his homework all the time. But much of it was the opposite problem -- he did read the instructions, but didn't remember that the teacher had told him to do something different. AJ is supposed to multiply most addition worksheets because he doesn't really need the addition practice and he's working on other things. She has reminded him several times, but he doesn't remember. So his score dropped. Now I understand the teacher's point of view here. I know exactly how frustrating AJ can be when you are trying to get him to do something different from the way he's done it before. It take numerous reminders over a fairly long period of time for the behavior to change. This drives me crazy, as I'm sure it drives his teacher crazy. But in this case, I have a little more sympathy with AJ. On the one hand, he's being told to pay more attention to written instructions. On the other, he's hearing that he's not supposed to follow written instructions. I suggested that the multiplication substitution be put in writing, either taped to his desk or, better yet, written on each worksheet.

Meanwhile, we are working with AJ on deciphering word problems. He's got his multiplication and division down, but he doesn't always know how to translate a word problem into a math problem accurately. Yesterday he came home with an assignment to write his own word problems with which he is to try to stump the school principal, who will do one student-created worksheet a week. AJ is very excited about this and I am too. What kid doesn't want to try to be smarter than his teachers and principal? And what a great way to get inside the way word problems work -- instead of yet another work sheet, a creative project. The teacher gets a big gold star for that one.

AJ spent much of the week working on his science fair project with his two friends, which meant I got to spend some time with two of my favorite parents. All three of the kids are definitely performing above average. One of them in ways very similar to AJ. He's in another class. Talking to his mother, I realize how well things really are going this year. Her son is getting minimal reading challenge and only gets challenge spelling when the bring a list in from home, like we did last year. He's getting no extra math at all. The mother of the other boy, who has been in AJ's class for the past two years, agreed that while their teacher this year is not as remarkable as their teacher last year, that she's doing a pretty good job.

The best news I heard at the conference was that when his teacher asks, "Who wants a challenge," he's always the first one with his hand up, shouting, "Me! Me!" This is a big change from last year, where he was often embarrassed about doing something different from everyone else. The difference is that this teacher has integrated challenge assigments seamlessly into her curriculum. In some cases, she offers the challenge assignments to everyone who wants to try them. In part because of class reorganization, AJ gets to work with a partner or in a small group on a number of tasks. The teacher is also using the Everyday Math curriculum in exactly the way I'd hoped she could. Everyday math cycles through a series of topics every year. When they get to a section where AJ is not challenged, she is pulling the assignments from the same topic in the 3rd or 4th grade book. He's still doing the same thing, but at his own level. Consequently, I think AJ is feeling much more a part of the class. This is particularly crucial this year, because he's much more aware of same/different issues than he was last year.

So, there has been definite progress on most fronts since Fall. Good news indeed.

Madder Men

In light of my last post and your comments on it, an article in today's New York Times Arts section seemed particularly timely.

The article,"Scholastic accused of Misusing Book Clubs" by Motoko Rich, discusses a watchdog group's opposition to the presence of advertising links and non-book items in the Scholastic Book Club flyers that go out to thousands of school children every month. I know several of us here at AJ's Clubhouse have expressed our concern about this before. The watchdog group is called Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. You can see more of what they do at their website, linked above.

The argument that Scholastic offers is that some of these items help bring reluctant readers to books by luring them with posters, toys and games. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood objects globally to anything that is not a book being marketed in schools and that the add-ons only teach children acquisitiveness, without actually teaching them to value books (I have heavily paraphrased here and take all credit for any oversimplification). I think my own opinion on the matter lies somewhere in the middle, although closer to the CCFC's side. I have already discussed in this space my discomfort with brand name advertising in schools. I don't, however, put the selling of a book with a poster in the same category as the selling of a video game. Scholastic has both types of things. I don't think video games belong in school flyers. But I have no problem with posters -- as long as the poster has something to do with the book. AJ loves it when his books come with posters. He has a number of them up in his room. But I would be surprised if he would choose a book simply because it had a poster. The poster would only encourage an interest that was already there. I don't even have a problem with some of the non-book items Scholastic sells -- science experiment kits, for example. If they get a kid to engage in some scientific inquiry at home, that's great. The Mad-Libs they've started selling are good too. Although not designed as educational tools but for silly fun, they encourage reading and writing and they taught my kid the parts of speech. My objection to most of the non-book items is the quality control -- the few science kit type products we've ordered from Scholastic have been cheaply made and hard to use. If they are going to sell such things, they should make sure they are good quality and worthwhile educational products. Not video games. Not advertising. Not junk.

Of course, what Scholastic wants to market outside of schools is its own business. Inside the school, where they have a captive audience that has to be there -- they have not chosen it -- marketing non-educational, branded, or plain inappropriate products is reprehensible. And Scholastic has been doing plenty of all three.

Mad Men

AJ is a huge fan of the website Funbrain. He loves the math games especially. He plays them in school when they have their computer lab day. I like the games too, but I'm a little squeamish about all the advertising. On the one hand, I'm sure the advertising is the only reason sites like this exist. And anything that gets a kid playing math for the sheer fun of it is doing something right. On the other hand, AJ is being bombarded with ads for Y0g0s and McDon@ld's. AJ and I talk a lot about advertising and what it does and how it works and why you should interrogate it, so I'm not really worried that he's being brainwashed. His friends are much more persuasive advocates for those particular products anyhow.

So my questions for you are, is advertising ever appropriate in educational materials? I am thinking not just of websites, but also things like the preschool math books based on Cheeri0s and M/Ms, school fundraisers with local fast food franchises (ours does D0min0s, Wendis and McDs every month with prizes for the class with the biggest haul) If so, how much is too much? What should we be doing about it?

Gray matter

We seem to be running into another problem of the well-meaning-teacher-doesn't-get-gifted-kid's-brain variety. AJ came home with a notebook marked "Reading Response Journal" on Friday, with a note inside stating that it would be due back each Monday. On the first page, a writing prompt had been pasted in: "If I were in this book I would..." and AJ had written a single sentence in response to a book called "Imogene's Antlers," which the class had read back in December. That was it. No other instructions. AJ said that in class she had asked for 2-3 sentences on each of 3 books each week, but he didn't know what he was supposed to write about. Was he supposed to do the same question for each book?

Now AJ is a daydreamer par excellence, so it is entirely possible that he missed the assignment given out in class, and that would be his fault. But since the teacher went through the trouble of printing out a piece of paper that had the deadlines on it, couldn't she have printed the assignment on it too? I have emailed her for further instructions which I'm sure she will provide and we'll have that part figured out.

But that's not the only problem here. There is also the issue of what books we're talking about. Imogene's Antlers is a good book, but not a good book for AJ. It is a good book for AJ four years ago. AJ could read three books like Imogene's Antlers in about five or ten minutes. The fact that he was reading it in school again this year ticks me off, but that is a problem for another day. The problem, for the moment, is the assignment: if this assignment is supposed to be based on for fun reading (which, since it seems to be taking the place of independent reading logs he's been doing since September, seems likely), then AJ's books will take a lot longer to read and three books a week would make this a huge assignment.

Common sense would dictate that he should write responses to what he's reading three times, whether it be three different books or not. But that is not what the admittedly vague assignment said, at least according to AJ. This worries him.

AJ has always been fixated on rules and following them to the letter of the law. It is, I think, a result of not fully understanding the world around him. If you are following the rules, you are doing the right thing. Gray areas are very confusing and unsettling to him. If anything, this trait has been increased this year by the way he and his teacher seem to misunderstand each other a lot of the time. He is worried about doing what he thinks is the right thing and then getting in trouble for it, which sometimes happens. To have an assignment this vague, particularly since it is made even more vague due to the difference of his reading from the rest of the class, causes him great anxiety.

AJ no longer accepts our suggestions for how to do vague assignments, so we are waiting to hear back from his teacher, which probably won't happen until tomorrow. In the mean time, we had him read a shorter book, one that offers him no challenge, but enables him to follow the letter of the law, as he understands it. And he followed the same prompt for Imogene's Antlers, because it was the only thing he had to go on and he was afraid of making a mistake.

I really do not like how AJ has become afraid of schoolwork, how much he balks at homework now. He used to love doing writing assignments. Now he dreads them. As for me, I'm dreading the upcoming parent-teacher conferences. Because there is a lot to talk about.

Book Review: Hate That Cat by Sharon Creech

It has been difficult to keep up with the posting over here at AJ's Clubhouse. There has been entirely too much snow and cold and not nearly enough school, which both reduces my choices of subject matter and also leave me with not enough time to write. But one thing snow and cold are good for are trips to the library. A lot of books we have picked up have been about magnets in preparation for AJ's science fair project. But he's also been trolling the new book shelves. This week, one of the books he came home with was Hate That Cat by Sharon Creech. I've never heard of the book or Creech before, but the cover informs me that she won a Newbery Medal for Walk Two Moons, so perhaps I should be more familiar.

AJ was attracted to the bright red cover with its surly line drawing of a cat by William Steig. But I'm the one who picked it up first. I read the whole thing in the car on the way home from the library (don't worry: I wasn't driving.)

Hate that Cat takes the form of a poetry journal written by a boy of indeterminate age (although I read fast and may have missed it) named Jack for Miss Stretchberry's class. There are a number of things I enjoyed about the book. The first is the way the story reveals itself, elliptically and with lots of holes that force the reader to read between the lines. This is fairly rare in the world of children's books, and I always like to see it.

Second, it is about poetry, both the reading and the writing of it. Miss Stretchberry's assignments are not belabored, only demonstrated. Mostly she seems to have had the class read famous poems and then try to write something in a similar veing. Readers of my other blog will be pleased to know that one of the poems used is William Carlos Williams' "This is Just to Say." Jack's engagement with the poetry he reads is lively and thoughtful and very realistically drawn. Hate That Cat could almost be used as a textbook for a poetry class, or, better yet, a class on the teaching of poetry. But it never feels excessively didactic or at all textbook-like, although it does include a collection of 12 poems mentioned in the book including four poems by Williams as well as works by Edgar Allan Poe, T. S. Eliot, Walter Dean Myers, Christopher Myers, Valerie Worth, Alfred Lord Tennyson as well as two by the fictional Jack. I was somewhat puzzled, however, by the fact that Eliot's poem "The Naming of Cats," from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, prints the cat's name "Jellylorum" as "Jellyrum" in two different places. Jellyrum does not scan properly, nor does either of my two editions of Eliot make any mention of it as an alternate (it is also "Jellylorum" in the poem's adaptation as lyrics in the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical Cats, so I can only assume it is a mistake, which is a shame in a book that is likely to introduce many of these poems to children for the first time. In addition to the poems, there is a several page bibliography of poetry books labeled "Books on the Class Poetry Shelf," which will hopefully encourage further poetic explorations on the part of the reader.

Jack's journal includes not only his poetic efforts, but his philosophical wrestling with the assignments, something I identified with greatly (and I'm sure AJ will too), as well as his conflicted feelings about his writing, his parents, his feelings about the death of his dog, and, of course, cats. I won't give away the story, but its culmination in Jack's description of Parents' Night and the poem he wrote about going there with his mother brought tears to my eyes and is an excellent example of how children can make poetry their own. I give two big thumbs up for this book, which is probably suitable for a fairly wide range of ages, although its publisher recommends it for grades 3-7.

Sharon Creech, Hate That Cat (New York: HarperCollins, 2008)

Time for a new bookshelf

Here at the Spy house, we've been wrapped up in Christmas for a couple of weeks now. AJ's relatives spoiled him rotten, as usual. In addition to the assorted non-educational toys and games, he got two science kits and a big haul of books. This year, AJ was gifted with:

Daniel Pinkwater: The Hoboken Chicken Emergency. AJ and I have been fans of Pinkwater's for years, ever since we discovered his picture books about a thoughtful polar bear named Larry and his badly behaved friends. I haven't gotten to read this one yet, but AJ laughs hard when he picks it up.

Kate DiCamillo: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. This is one I've picked up at the bookstore and put down again, uncertain if AJ will respond to it. But my mother finally got it for him and I'm looking forward to reading it, maybe as our out loud book.

Rick Riordan: Book 1 of the 39 Steps series -- The Maze of Bones. We've been fans of Riordan's Percy Jackson series, AJ for the adventure, I for the clever uses of Greeky mythology. I'm skeptical of this series, due to the contest and cards and internet sites attached. I'm always cynical when it seems like the books are created by marketing instead of the other way around. But I decided to give the first book a try. This is scheduled to be a 10-book series. While Riordan outlined the series and wrote this book, other authors will be taking on the rest.

Eleanor Cameron: The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. This was another book provided by my mother, and one I'd never heard of before. It dates from the mid-1950s, the beginning of the space race, and revolves around two boys who travel to another planet covered in mushrooms and meet some unhappy green people. It sounds totally up AJ's alley.

Jason Lethcoe: The Misadventures of Benjamin Bartholomew Piff #1: You Wish. This was a gift from AJ's aunt and uncle. I'd never heard of this one before either. It looks old-fashioned (in a good way) and the description, which tells of a boy growing up in an orphanage, sounds a little old-fashioned too, although it was written in 2007. AJ has inherited my childhood penchant for books set in orphanages and boarding schools, so I'm sure he'll enjoy this. I'm looking forward to checking it out too. If it's good, there are more where it came from -- the series has at least 4 books so far.
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Bette Bao Lord: In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. Also from AJ's aunt and uncle, i've been hearing about this book for years -- it was published more than twenty years ago -- and I'm glad to finally see it in person. This also sounds right up AJ's alley -- baseball and history.

Jeff Kinney: Diary of a Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself-Book. This one was on AJ's Christmas list. While I have some reservations about the Wimpy Kid series, I can't deny that it seems to turn on AJ's imagination. This one is really a diary in disguise. The first third or so of the book offers ideas for writing -- half-finished comic strips to draw, self-interview questions, etc. The second part is just a blank book. On Christmas Day, AJ was already writing in it. And anything that gets AJ writing voluntarily is a good present.

Children's Books about Animals

The Miss Rumphius Effect posted a list of favorite children's books about animals this morning. It's a good list, but there are many more good ones too. I commented on several of my favorites that were omitted: Dodie Smith's 101 Dalmatians, Felix Salter's Bambi, Marjorie Rawlings' The Yearling, and many of Gerald Durrell's books. What are your favorites? And don't forget to check out the link in the sidebar to After Seuss, our list of recommended books for precocious readers.