Star Student

Time for conferences again!  Mackenzie's teacher expected that maybe Mack wouldn't grow as much academically because she'd already reached well above her grade level. She was surprised to see that Mack has had significant growth in all areas, placing her overall at the second grade level and her reading level plateaued out at about early 3rd grade. At our previous meeting, brief mention was made of Mackenzie possibly skipping kindergarten and going into first grade. Both Mrs. Solliday and Mike and I were against that. There were far too many cons and, in our opinion, very few pros .  At this meeting, Mrs. Solliday said that seeing this far jump in Mackenzie made her wonder if maybe Mack was an exception to the rule , would keeping a child this advanced only hinder her growth? She took her questions to the first grade teachers who agreed with our initial thought. Skipping a grade, socially , can be handicapping to a child and place them at a disadvantage. Socially, the current first and second grade girls are worlds different than Mack and Mackenzie has had no social prepping for that(- something that Mike remembered feeling when he skipped the 2rd grade). Since so much of the social issues girls deal with are considered normal, we think it's better for Mack to go through those stages with girls she is familiar with vs. being the new girl. Acadmically, Mrs. Solliday pointed out, there is always going to be a gap of some kind and that gap has to be accounted for, usually at the expense of the child. She wanted to give us the choice, though, about skipping. Unequivicolly, the answer was no. The back up plan, though, is that Mackenzie will be going daily to spend time with the advanced 1st graders ( there was far too much of an age gap to consider sending her to the second grade classrooms) . During this time, Mack will work on reading as it writing as it pertains to reading. She will miss out on some 1:1 time with her teacher , something we also think is very important but at this point, it's probably better for Mack to continue feeding her brain and Mrs. Solliday will find time during the day to touch base with Mack. This is all pretty familiar since both Mike and I were sent up grade levels for reading and Mike eventually was added to the Magnet program, South Lyon's gift and talented program.

Socially, Mack is a great example for her classmates and Mrs. Solliday said that she'd be so sad to lose Mack if we had decided to skip her ahead. There have been times where Mack has needed a bit of correcting and this was something Mrs. S was glad to see because Mackenzie tends to be on the more proper side . I was happy to hear this, too. It's far better to learn the rules ( through correction) in the early years.

So that's that! This week Mrs. Solliday will spend an hour in the first grade room, observing the setting Mack will be in . As long as she ( and we) feel it's a good place for Mack, she will start her new routine on Wednesday! I'm excited to see this progression for her and she is so proud of herself.