School report time

We got Beth and Bill’s school reports today. The way it’s done these days is back to the a, b, c reports. A ‘c’ is where your child should be if he or she is keeping up with the class. A ‘c’ is also what I remember to be the mark that I got when I was being really lazy or not that bright! It’s either changed or I was smarter than I thought! Bill got pretty much all ‘c’s with the exception of a ‘b’ for reading which I was very pleased with. Beth got all ‘d’s and ‘e’s which I expected but it’s still not that nice to see written in black and white.

There’s not any subject that she’s up to her peers in. Some things such as Civics and Citizenship (what the?), The Arts and Reading are at the beginning of year 4. There are a few that are half way through year 3 and a good handful that are at the end of year 2. Her effort and class behaviour however are very good! Tanya’s comments (the principal) included the very positive “you have enjoyed your friends and laughed lots whilst playing with them.”

There were some positives which hopefully we can attribute to our flaxseed treatments. Helma comments that Beth has had an excellent second semester. Where going home time was a nightmare for probably a good year, staff have been able to distract Beth of late with card games with her peers which settles her down. She used to make lots of noises with her fingers in her ears at the anticipation of home time, not sure why, but it was very distracting to the class by all accounts. Her output of work has improved and has been of a better standard. Most of her work has to be done with support as she doesn’t stay on task particularly well but I was well aware of this. Spelling test results show an improvement. Punctuation has been experimented with more also.

Maths again seems to be her weakest subject. I truly believe that she must have missed a cue somewhere along the way and, as with speech rules, if she ‘got’ what was missing then a lot of it would fall into place.

Her enthusiasm and energy seem to be mentioned throughout the report. Her ‘passion project’ was on Pink who we went to see in concert earlier in the year. Tanya comments how much she must have enjoyed the concert and her enthusiasm for stories. Her PE Teacher Mr Card comments that Beth told him that PE was ‘fun, fun, fun in the sun, sun, sun!”

Her Visual Arts teacher comments that ‘Beth likes to explore the materials in her own way which is often very different to the set task.” That doesn’t sound like my Bethie! Mind you, sometimes I wonder if she had the chance to really explore something artistic, to do it her way how it would turn out. I bought some blank canvases last summer for the kids to do some paintings. Beth’s one was lovely but in the end she smeared it all together and it turned into a horrid poo brown blob! Maybe I just need to take a photo and then let her do what she wants, she doesn’t seems to care if she’s ruining what I consider to be her masterpiece. She may turn it into something even better.

As always the report ends on a positive with accolates for her winning the Red Faces competition at Camp (don’t know where she got that idea from) and also getting a prize in the schools “You’ve got Talent” show.

Beth puts her all into almost everything she does, she’s got heaps of enthusiasm and truly a childlike glee about her that I’m actually quite proud of. I myself am a person of highs and lows. My husband tells me that I’m setting myself up for a fall when I get so excited about something happening (or something that may not end up happening) but I say it’s worth it. That high is fantastic, such a buzz. The lows are crap but there’s always something else to look forward to. How boring would life be if we didn’t have that. I reckon aim for the stars and I hope Beth does too. We might just get lucky.