I need help responding appropriately

[Kindra178]

If I recall correctly, he’s a week from the cutoff, right? Being young for the grade is really challenging as teacher expectations are way higher, girls are so far advanced and boys are desperately immature.

I agree with all posts above. However, you cannot separate the fact that he’s the youngest in the class by possibly as much as 15 months.

If you are going to keep him in that school, he may need tutoring. I also recommend testing as others have said.


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[AngB]

My 1st grade teacher actually urged my mom (a veteran special ed teacher) to hold me back a year because my handwriting was so bad. She basically laughed in her face, nicely. By 3rd grade, I was a straight A student and never looked back, never did anything special to improve my handwriting, it just got better.

DS is also in third with awful handwriting. Sometimes illegible. We have worked with him on it a ton. It just is. My understanding is they cannot give OT services without a learning disability/etc. so they will not even test him. We may bite the bullet and pay for private OT but aren't quite to that point yet.

Anyway, I haven't heard anything about it from his third grade teacher so far besides she will correct his spelling.

[ha98ed14]

I agree with dogmom on how to approach it. Sariana's sandwhich method is also great advice. I wanted to affirm to you that there IS A HUGE gap between 2nd and 3rd! More so than any other promotion IME. DD struggled a lot in 3rd grade, and her teacher sent home what felt like reams of unfinished papers, but she didn't ask her to finish them all. She would clearly identify the ones that needed to be completed and we focused on that. DD's desk was always a mess; she regurlarly "lost" things in her desk, and she didn't have time or was too overwhelmed to clean it out herself. Her handwriting also was sloppy, but it wasn't a barrier to getting her work done. It was just messy. Teacher didn't punish her for it. Now she is in 7th grade and she loses points on her math for not labeling her units (inches, km, hours, widgets, etc.) She doesn't think she should lose points for that, but it is different because it is fundamental to answering the question. It's not as arbitrary as how she makes her Os and 0s, which start at the bottom and loop right, rather than a the top and loop left. She has a 504, too. Hang in there.

[anonomom]

Thanks, all. A few notes/answers:

1. Yes, his birthday is 9 days before the cutoff, and usually 4-6 days before the first day of school.

2. We had him evaluated by an OT in kindergarten, on a suggestion by his teacher, and they didn't find any problems/delays. It sounds like, however, the potential issues some of you have flagged wouldn't necessarily show up in an OT evaluation. We were already looking into getting him evaluated for his impulsivity, will add the handwriting problems to our list of concerns.

3. I definitely need to get the teachers' take on what they're seeing in the classroom before I start jumping to conclusions. From what I can see from home, they haven't done a whole lot of training in organization, but they may well be trying very hard and DS just isn't listening/absorbing the lessons. The note I received was to talk about DS's "work habits," but DS claims he just runs out of time to work on certain tasks.

4. There are two teachers involved here: math/science and ELA/Social Studies. The math teacher has an excellent reputation and I think she'd have been a great fit for my other kids. The ELA teacher I don't know as much about her teaching style. I knew her as an aquaintance/friend before she was hired by the school, and she has always struck me as being someone who likes things "just so" and is very, very concerned with details and appearances. That doesn't make her a bad teacher, but perhaps a bad fit for DS?

5. I don't think I'm ready to pull DS out of this school based on a few weeks of struggle. His first and second grade teachers were really great to him, and he made tremendous progress with them. The only options aside from this school would be a charter or a private; and frankly neither the charters nor the privates around here have better academic outcomes than our public school (except for the really exclusive, 30k a year privates, which, no.) I am willing (and eager) to work with the teachers and the administration to find strategies that everyone can live with, and am prepared to ask to place him in a different class if that becomes necessary. But pulling him out of school seems like a last resort, not a first option.

6. I wasn't aware that I could have him evaluated through the school, so thank you to all who mentioned it. I clearly have a lot to learn. :-)

[mommy111]

Aiyy, my DS has terrible handwriting. If his teachers gave him Re-dos he’d probably stop working. However, despite the fact that I ask them to ask him to redo, they don’t.....and say he will get better with age. I kinda agree because egetting a high of redos is very stressful. Your teachers sound really.....not nice.....sorry!

[mmsmom]

My DS has horrible handwriting. His K teacher referred him for an OT evaluation. He didn’t qualify then but he was re-evaluated in 1st when handwriting still didn’t improve and he qualifies to receive OT at school. (A parent can request an evaluation and the school has a certain number of days to respond. Find out the procedure for your district. They do not have to have a disability; that is the purpose of the evaluation- to determine if there is a disability). His handwriting did improve but he quickly reverted to all his old habits. In 3rd grade he had the option of using a computer for a lot of the assignments that his classmates would hand write and he always took that option. Now he is in 7th and still has poor handwriting but it is usually legible. He’s an A student. To my knowledge he was never asked to redo any assignments.

My kids did not receive number or letter grades in 3rd grade so that seems like a lot for 3rd grade to me. They also didn’t focus on correct spelling until 3rd grade so I wouldn’t expect it to be such a focus early in the year. Overall it sounds like more of a strict and perfectionist environment vs a supportive one.

[PZMommy]

6. I wasn't aware that I could have him evaluated through the school, so thank you to all who mentioned it. I clearly have a lot to learn. :-)

The school will just evaluate his ability to access the curriculum, and if he has a disability that impacts his ability to access the curriculum. A private eval will be much more informative, but the school will still do their own eval as they have a different set of criteria for needing services. Just because he didn’t qualify in kinder, does not mean he won’t qualify now. It’s been my experience as a Kinder teacher, that it is really hard to get kinder students services, because there is such a wide range of what is developmentally acceptable at that age. I’ve had many kids be denied services in Kinder, only to qualify the next year in first grade. Also, I would request a full eval, not just an eval for OT. I know in my district (and it may be state), OT can not be a stand alone service anymore. A student can only get OT if they are receiving services for something else.

[dogmom]

As far as evaluation goes what you will get for it varies from state to state and even school to school. By DD had an IEP for 3 years, but in another district they could have denied her because she was doing well enough. If a teacher thinks a kid needs evaluated there are a lot of hoops to jump through before they can get it. A parent can just write, I wish to have my child evaluated for learning disabilities and if will happen. The school can flag areas of concern, but they cannot diagnose something like ADD because that’s a medical diagnosis and a doctor needs to do that. In real life there’s a lot of overlap. A school evaluation is not as robust, but it’s not useless and for some kids enough. It also happens much faster and is free. My DD neuropsych evaluation a requested well into IEP and I had to wait 10 months for it. The bulk ($2300) was covered my insurance. It was much more in-depth and helpful in the long run, but was not necessarily needed up front to get help.