This year has been pretty amazing for Sloane. The combination of full in person learning, her teacher, her classmates, and her school has lead to explosive growth for her.
Sloane’s reading skills are incredible. She’s reading road signs, instructions, packages, close captioning, and our texts messages! In the past month, she has read almost all of the DogMan series. She also knows how to search for and download Kindle books to her Kindle. At Christmas, I was surprised she read a book before I read it to her. Now she is reading a few books each week I haven’t read to her yet.
Over the year, her class has done different writing units- personal narratives, opinion writing, book reviews, and teaching books. They are encouraged to draw illustrations to add to the story and add speech bubbles. Below is an example from the beginning of the year and one from the end of the year.
There was a district art show at the library in May. Sloane’s polar bear was selected to represent the first grade from her school. She got a certificate and was very proud to see her art work up.
Sloane struggled a bit this year with interactions with some classmates and some nervousness. She was able to talk with the school councilor who helped her with strategies. It helped so much and gave Sloane some skills to move forward in the world of interacting with a wide range of people. Overall the school seems to emphasize social-emotional learning and it creates a great environment for Sloane.
Sloane’s class was able to take 2 field trips at the end of the year. I was able to chaperone both. First, we went to the high school to watch Act 1 of Cinderella. Sloane loved it- from the bus ride, to having me there, and of course watching the performance. She and I went back on the weekend to see the whole performance with our neighbor friends.
The second trip was to Lacamas Lake in the next town over. We went on a little hike and looked for native wild flowers and plants. It was part of her class’s plant anatomy unit. Then we had a picnic in the park and they were able to play at the playground. Both field trips and the performance made us feel like part of the community which was welcomed after these isolated pandemic years.
Sloane’s school does move up day where she found out her teacher for next year and spent some time in her new classroom. It has helped her to feel confident going into 2nd grade in the fall. Sloane has asked if she can go to school all summer, but I think once she gets into some fun summer activities, she’ll be happy.
