Back this summer I shared with all of you that my 12 year-old DS would be skipping 6th grade and going to 7th so thought I would up-date you. The first few weeks were really rough which came as no surprise as he does not adjust to change well. At one point I got a call from the school Social Worker because they thought the class below the one he is currently in would be a good fit since they work mainly on social skills. After talking though we came up with an alternate plan since the other room would not meet his academic needs. He would stay in his current class but join a social skills training group, and the social worker would work with him outside during recess since this is when he responds best to her. Things are going somewhat better now that he has been in school about a month. He has made new friends and this has seemed to help some of the behavior issues first seen at school. Ds seems much happier this year then in years past, last year was especially bad for teasing.
Academically he is working with Saxon Math 54 and seems to do extremely well with it getting mainly 90’s and above. Basic skills texts are used for most the classes. In SS they are working on Geography, and in science they are working on life science. In “Skills” they are working on types and structure of sentences. For reading they just finished Harris and Me by Gary Paulsen and he loved it. As a matter of fact this past weekend he read A Soldiers Heart by the same author.
I think the jury is still out but he seems to be making progress and best of all he seems happy.
On Sat I received a D-F notice for him, he is getting a D in PE, they give written tests. So far he is getting and A in both Lit and Skills, a B in both math (HW sloppiness brought his grade down here) and art, and a C in both science and Social Studies. They sent a permission slip home for him to recieve tutoring two hours a week. He complains the math is too easy and that is why he rushes, he says science and social studies are hard. He is going to try the tutoring for a while and see how it goes.