First Day of Summer

The public schools ended Friday, and so did we. We have little odds and ends that I still want to pick up and finish, but I'm giving us all a week off before we do anything. It won't be a pool day today because of predicted thunderstorms, so we'll make banana bread and pick up a summer read aloud which I'm looking forward to. One thing I noticed is that even when we leave the formal work behind, we don't abandon learning. The kids read all morning, made up new board games, and begged to watch a The Way Things Work DVD. You can't really beat letting woolly mammoths teach physics be a TV treat, can you?

The standardized test results are in, and I thought I would share. Virginia looks for which stanine kids fall into overall. Each child must be in the 4th stanine or above to keep the parent off of probation. I'll give you the overall plus the individual picture.

Thomas (3rd Grade)
Word Analysis 6
Vocab 7
Comprehension 9
Spelling 4
Language Mechanics 5
Language Expression 9
Mathematics Computation 6
Math Concepts 7
Science 9
Social Studies 7
Overall 8

Anthony (3rd Grade)
Word Analysis 5
Vocabulary 7
Comprehension 8
Spelling 4
Language Mechanics 5
Language Expression 8
Mathematics Computation 8
Math Concepts 8
Science 6
Social Studies 8
Overall 7

Maria (1st Grade)
Word Analysis 6
Vocab 8
Comprehension 6
Language Mechanics 4
Language Expression 9
Math Computation 6
Math Concepts 6
Science 7
Social Studies 9
Overall 7

Some thoughts on the scores. Our curriculum doesn't teach all subjects in the same order or in the same way as a standard school would. This explains Language Mechanics for Maria and some of the Math scores since they covered material we haven't introduced. In other areas, like Lang. Mech. for the boys and Spelling, I thought those subjects needed a little beefing up,. I think the scores agree, although the spelling score is actually an improvement from last year. So there were no surprises, Bill and I are happy, and everyone scored well enough to satisfy the state. Next week I'll send these scores in, and our year will be officially done.