k12+/Virtual Schools Fall 2010 - Page 8

[kittie313]

Well, it took dd1 a grand total of 15 MINUTES to do her portfolio writing once we got home from karate with her being on the dry erase board. I got pics of her rough, pics of the editing I did that I went over with her (most of it was she misspelled names of friends), and pics of her final draft. ALL on the board. I'm loving this........... And now she's doing some math review of 2 digit addition on the board with the base 10 set and place value mat. This weekend my h is going to go over subtraction with her in detail, spending a couple hours tomorrow morning I think working with her before we take them all to MILs overnight. (I have the most awesome weekend scheduled, my bff is coming over to watch the girls tonight for a couple hours so mommy and daddy can go out on a dinner date for the first time since MARCH, and then tomorrow they all stay the night with MIL because we're going to a wedding and the kegger, erm I meant reception, afterward, its dd1's birth dad that is getting married and dd1 said she'd rather stay with grandma instead so we're having an awesome kid-free weekend for the first time in a looooooong time)

Now I just need to scan in dd2's portfolio piece to submit to her teacher and I'll be set. She's throwing a little hissy fit about dd1 getting to do all her work on the dry-erase board like she is so we're going to get a second one next payday for her to do her work on.

[MyTwoAs]

Kittie313 - Yay for the dry erase board working out! Enjoy your fun-filled weekend.

[kittie313]

ok Fun weekend is over. lol The friend getting married is dd1's bio-dad and he's been dating her on and off for 14 years (didn't want to get serious until he felt he was stable enough for a family). She had given up on ever marrying him, so his Valentine's gift this year to her made her scream and faint because it was such a surprise. Anyway, back to school-related stuff.............

I got an e-mail this morning about a free info session online Wednesday for FREE TUTORING face to face for kids in math, language arts, and reading. I don't know if that means dd1 is in Title 1 now, but I do know that today they released the list of Title 1 kids. So I'm going to this online info session, and if I can get her tutoring I am going to be all over this. Especially since the person I'm trying to convince to tutor her for money just got married on Saturday and she is a bit busy with getting used to married life (obviously they are VERY good friends of ours, she has a Master's in elementary education with a specialization in LD teaching but works PT at a dollar store because she likes that work better, she tutors on the side and does homeschool portfolio reviews). Tutoring for free, yep I'll take it if I can get it for her.

[elanorh]

Ack --

Ina has an eluminate session NOW and I can't find the link. Her old teacher had a link on her email signature so I could go via that; new teacher doesn't, and it seems like someone had told us that there would be a clickable link on the home page to go straight to the teacher eluminate sessions too - can't find it.

Does anyone know what I need to do (other than kmail her teacher and ask for the link, which I have done?)?

Cat, sounds like a good weekend. Glad the dry-erase board is working so well!!

[kittie313]

Originally Posted by elanorh

Ack --

Ina has an eluminate session NOW and I can't find the link. Her old teacher had a link on her email signature so I could go via that; new teacher doesn't, and it seems like someone had told us that there would be a clickable link on the home page to go straight to the teacher eluminate sessions too - can't find it.

Does anyone know what I need to do (other than kmail her teacher and ask for the link, which I have done?)?

Cat, sounds like a good weekend. Glad the dry-erase board is working so well!!

Elanorh- dd1's teacher gave us a .pdf class connect card with a link to her classroom for this year. Did yours give you a similar card by chance? DD2's teacher didn't give us one this year, nor did she last year for both girls, so this is a new thing for me to have one of those.

[elanorh]

No card ....

She did kmail back quickly enough that I was able to use that link. I just need to keep track of that kmail.

ETA:
Just finished some phonics. I don't know WHAT is going on with Ina and Phonics. She does struggle a little more with spelling - I sometimes have to remind her to picture the word in her head before she writes it. But mostly, it seems like she's simply not attentive. I ask her to spell "Mash," she spells "Match." Dutch becomes "datch." I ask her what sounds "a" makes and she reviews them all, then says, "Ooops!"

It's like somebody hit her over the head!! This is not what she was doing in early Phonics lessons this past year. She literally couldn't seem to remember what letter makes the "ks" sound when we were doing that part of the assessment. She has been able to do that since about November of last year with no problem at all!!! She does have a little cold but seems to function just fine with running, playing, building large lego structures etc.

We are *still* writing super-large letters, too. She's doing better at using capital letters appropriately and writing sentences with capitals for the first letter, appropriate punctuation at the end.... Having helped with her CCD class on Wednesday, I can confidently state that the messy writing she has fits right in with the other first graders who were there (from schools all over the county). So I'm probably being a bit too anal about it. But, she still doesn't see any reason to write small; then overlaps letters to the extent that I need her to spell the words to me because I can't read the sentence with parts of the sentences above and below it impinging on the sentence.



So, my plan now is to make some graph paper and we are on our own, going to start working on how to plan ahead to make letters the appropriate size when "filling in the blanks" on her Phonics assessments etc. I figure, if I have her color in a square for each letter and space in the sentence, then write the letters in the squares beneath that, that should be a good way to start reinforcing that. I think we'll alternate between that and HWT every day and maybe we'll make more progress on this.

I still don't know what to do about the "Blah, don't feel like focusing, think I'll twist and fidget and write things down wrong which I know I'm writing wrong, just because I don't feel like doing this," attitude. One solution would be to do this seated at the table - but our table is bench seats and not so easy for me to sit with her at. Once dh's office is finished, we'll order a table/chairs for the girls to sit at to do school work, and that will help. I'd far rather sit on the floor to do the phonics, but Ina doesn't seem to work well that way at all.

[kittie313]

OH MY GOSH! I just have to share, I'm having the biggest warm fuzzies right now and want ya'll to join in my happy dance. lol

At 11am I got a call from OHVA's at-risk department. I spent 45min talking with her about dd1's learning challenges and what is going on, and how we've been waiting so long for testing with Children's, and she said that definitely she needs intervention and more help and asked me to k-mail her with a background of dd1's learning and sensory issues, specifically asking them to do testing. She said as soon as she gets it that she'll print it and take it across the hall to the psychologist who handles it all, and they will get the ball rolling and should have an IEP or 504 in place within a couple months for her. WOOHOO!!!!!

[MyTwoAs]

That's great news Kittie313 - is OHVA set up like a charter school? If so I'm pretty sure that they have to follow IDEA 2004 regulations and if so once you put a request for evaluation in writing, the assessment must be completed within 60 days. It sounds like the individual in the at-risk department is on the ball, yay!

[kittie313]

Originally Posted by MyTwoAs

That's great news Kittie313 - is OHVA set up like a charter school? If so I'm pretty sure that they have to follow IDEA 2004 regulations and if so once you put a request for evaluation in writing, the assessment must be completed within 60 days. It sounds like the individual in the at-risk department is on the ball, yay!

Yep, OHVA is a publicly-funded virtual academy for the state of Ohio. I have to follow all the rules for attendance and testing that the local b&m schools do and they give me curriculum and computers and such for free to use. I was told at our local ps when dd1 was in k that they can't do anything legally unless a child is in 3rd grade and 2 grade levels behind in at least 2 subjects (her teacher told us this) and that submitting a request was pointless before then because of that law so I waited so long because of this. Then when I found out otherwise last school year, I thought that I'd have to do the testing privately because its a virtual academy and they didn't have the ability to do testing, which I learned otherwise just last week. So, now I have things going. The at-risk coordinator responded already to my written request, and said that the person who does testing is out of the office for KRA-L testing until Friday but she'll have it first thing that morning she's back in office and she'll be in touch likely that day, Monday at the latest. Its a good thing the change to our cell phone plan doesn't start until Oct. 7th, as I used almost all our minutes for this month already and am about to start on the pile of rollover minutes we have (no house phone) to start the process. Hopefully they can fast-track it to do as much as possible before the 7th so that I can handle most of the phone calls without overage charges (right now I have 3400 rollover minutes, but the 7th our rollover drops down to 500 rollover with 500 shared minutes because we changed our package).

But on a positive note, today I tried writing her math work that's in the workbook she refuses to even look at onto a plain white sheet of printer paper and she did 3/4 of them today without fighting me any. And we got lang arts and phonics done too. I decided today that I was only going to spend 1 hour working on her math instead of going until she could pass the assessment, so we only got about half the work done today with her math. I got a full day in with both girls, and no real fighting from anyone about it.

[Love_My_Babies]

We are a month into K12, and I am thinking about jumping ship. I am feeling very constricted. The only thing my son wants to do is math because that is the only subject that is challenging him. I do a lot of supplementing in the other subjects to engage and challenge him, so I am in essence virtual schooling and homeschooling. That is time consuming and tedious. And, there are things my son would like to study and do, but we don't have the time because of what we have to get done with K12.

Ugh. Anyone ever feel this way and stuck with it?

[kittie313]

OK I am ready to beat my head on a brick wall I think. I just spent 15min with dd2 working on the place value stuff in math 1, and she not only got it right away but also grasped expanded form and carrying at the same time. UGH!!!!! I tested her out of a unit and called it good, then tonight dh said he'll go over addition and subtraction facts with her as usual to help her memorize them (she knows how to do the basic facts already so now we are memorizing them, we want her to be able to pop off the answers instantly before she hits math 2 after seeing how dd1 is struggling with that stuff). But anyway, dd1 sat in on my little lesson with dd2 and now she's got expanded form for 2 digit numbers down pat, so when I do her math lesson this afternoon we're going to attempt to do 3 digit expanded form and place value to see if she's open to it at all, and then continue with adding 3 digit numbers. I swear, how can two girls who are just 12 months apart be at opposite ends of the learning spectrum like this? And to make it more fun, dd2 is the one who was born early, the one that we were warned may have all the learning problems later as she started school. I think doctors are flipping idiots............ OK rant on that over, I just needed to get it out because I can't say it out loud until late tonight when the girls are all asleep and dh and I can slip outside for me to unload it all on him.

I am REALLY frustrated with it though right now, obviously. Hopefully we can get dd1 past this brick wall soon so she can move forward and possibly even start to take off with math and remember what all we worked on last school year. Her reading appears to be starting to take off a bit, so I don't see why math can't too.

And I'm probably going to get in trouble next week for our hours, especially with dd1. But thankfully, I have documented communications with her teacher and the SN department and the SES department about dd1 shutting down and refusing to even try to do lessons, and our having been sick the first 3 days of attendance and having to call 2 vacation days because of dh's work schedule (we always try to take days off lessons when he is scheduled off so that he can spend time with his girls outside of structured academics). If you deduc those hours that we missed that the teachers are aware of, we aren't really behind on hours as much as it is we are actually a couple hours ahead. But I don't know if they will take those into account or not, so I need to k-mail some teachers and ask.

[425lisamarie]

Originally Posted by Love_My_Babies

We are a month into K12, and I am thinking about jumping ship. I am feeling very constricted. The only thing my son wants to do is math because that is the only subject that is challenging him. I do a lot of supplementing in the other subjects to engage and challenge him, so I am in essence virtual schooling and homeschooling. That is time consuming and tedious. And, there are things my son would like to study and do, but we don't have the time because of what we have to get done with K12.

Ugh. Anyone ever feel this way and stuck with it?

I'm TOTALLY with you on this one. We bagged it. Too much work and administration for me. DS was SO bored and basically went from loving our learning days to hating school. I had to take 2 day off from EVERYTHING and go back to our old ways and math program which he loves. And now that I don't spend so much time weeding through non essentials, logging time/fudging time etc, I actually have time to work with my younger DD at the same time, art, gardening and baking/cooking like we love to do together.

[kittie313]

I just had another DUH MOM moment. I was looking through some papers for something a little bit ago while dd1 did her journal work, and I found the prescription that the eye doctor wrote for dd1 at her last checkup (he wrote it because I told her in front of him that if she took care of her glasses we were getting her that we'd get a script and take to a different place to order her a pair of Hannah Montana ones like she was wanting). The date on that prescription was October 1, 2009. She is due for another checkup here in a couple weeks, it makes total sense that she'd need a new prescription. I'm SURE that needing new glasses isn't helping anything at all, and at the end of the school year she broke her glasses playing soccer (she didn't care care of that pair from the eye doctor so she never got the HM ones she wanted) and we didn't get them replaced because it was summer break, and I totally forgot about it until just a bit ago. I called the eye doctor and she and dd2 both go in for checkups on 10/5 in the afternoon. I wonder how many of our issues will be cleared up when we get her back in a pair of glasses to correct her vision.............. oops. Yep, bad momma moment there, am I really that flakey?

But on the plus side, this morning with her watching dd2's lesson on place value and expanded form with 2 digit numbers I was able to get her to extend it to being 3 digit numbers. So now I just have to get her to do the assessment today so she can move on to the next lesson already.

[Love_My_Babies]

I just sent an email to our virtual school to begin the process of withdrawing from K12. So, we will no longer be posting on this thread. I wish you all the best this school year. See you around MDC!

[kittie313]

Originally Posted by Love_My_Babies

I just sent an email to our virtual school to begin the process of withdrawing from K12. So, we will no longer be posting on this thread. I wish you all the best this school year. See you around MDC!

Virtual schooling is definitely not for everyone. I'm sure you will have an awesome school year independently hsing, and will find the right fit for your family that way.

[kittie313]

I just spent my morning calling tutoring services to find the one that fits my family best. I think I found it with the very first call I made, although I still called a few others to be sure before I say it for certain. So now I need to fill out paperwork for 2 kids to get tutoring (one as a gifted kid to continue to challenge her, one for catching up and helping her grow and succeed). I am really looking forward to it, and we have a teleconference tomorrow with one of the tutors and the coordinator to see if we are a good enough fit for me to find the budget money for the gas required for us to meet halfway between our homes (he lives an hour and a half away but is specialized in SpEd kids and works well with those kids and their accelerated siblings, and knows a LOT about anxiety and dyslexia so he is equipped to work with her)

[elanorh]

Cat, it sounds like you've got a great tutor lined up! Hope you're able to make it all work out.

In terms of k12 frustration -- yes, sometimes I'm frustrated too. I was really frustrated last year for the first couple months - Ina was _not_ getting the phonics at all, and the math was waaaay too easy (so were many of the Language Arts things). Some of the old hands here told me - do the assessments and move on. I think for many kids in K in k12, most of the coursework for at least a couple courses is 'review.' Our teacher, when I talked about it with her, told me to do Unit Reviews in the math and as long as we passed them, move on to the next unit. I actually didn't do that because sometimes there'd be a weird little thing I needed to teach embedded in their "study questions" at the beginning of the lesson or whatever, but mostly for a lot of the K math, I just handed the assessment to Ina and if she was able to pass it we moved on. This is one of the things about k12 - you don't have to do it all, if your kid gets it, don't do it, just move on to stuff that does need doing (exception of course being whatever work they want you to hand in to them, they do need to do that).

All that said - obviously virtual schools aren't for everyone. I'm really frustrated with the "Math Plus" program they've switched to this year. Among other things, I can't so easily "just assess out" of a lesson that Ina already knows (it takes longer to click through the whole lesson to get to the checkpoint or etc.). Grrrr. I liked it better when it was a mostly-offline course.

Dh likes k12 more than I do (he's very appreciative of the "free" aspects of it ). I think as we approach the standardized tests in a couple years, we will probably be reassessing k12 and possibly switching to a different curriculum. We'll see. It's always been my big concern (well, that and music, but since I can sub piano for music now, I'm good with that issue.

Anyway - so, how we're doing here - Ina was really lethargic and low energy last week, not interested in school etc. It was weird; she's usually a twitchy, high-energy kiddo. Sunday she got a really high fever (101-102) but no other symptoms; Monday morning she puked. So we didn't do school at all on Monday - I'd been nearly 'caught up' again in the subjects in which we were still behind (Science, Math, Language). We took the day off and read the rest of A Little Princess (counted that as Language), and today we busted through stuff - we're almost caught up in math now, and a day ahead in Phonics. We just started the first grade unit on Matter and Ina knew the answers for the assessment for the first lesson without teaching it. I suspect she'll be that way for all of the unit, but I know she'll enjoy seeing herself prove the experiments in it, so we're probably going to just do the experiments/hands-on science parts of the unit, and see how she does on the assessments, probably a one-day festival of fun!

We are heading out on our annual two-week fall trip next week. I hope to be all caught up in everything by then, and possibly to have worked ahead a little. We will be traveling with a mobile internet connection, and I'm going to see how easily we might be able to do a few of the online lessons while in the vehicle (where we have good cell service). It should be a fun experiment.

[mizmerricat]

I'ld love to hear from some of you about the Phonics program. DD is really enjoying most of the other K courses. The math is a little too easy, but we just click through quickly and do the assessments. The LA, History & Science have been mostly great so far. But she is just not getting the phonics at all. She does have some special needs(mostly physical, some attention issues), so the teachers are not really concerned about her being behind, but I'm worried. She's guessing at answers and getting very frustrated. I think I could cope with her not understanding some of the other subjects/concepts, but I can't stop worrying that if phonics doesn't go well, then she won't enjoy reading, and helping my children love reading is one of my most important goals as a parent. Totally mommy freakout, I know, but still.
I've checked a few lessons as complete hoping that moving on to something different would help, but I don't feel like she's "mastered" a single one.
I've mostly read good reviews of the K12 phonics program. Did anyone here find that it did NOT work for your child? What did you do?

[kittie313]

OOOO I can answer this one Heather!!!!! I have a dyslexic kid in 2nd grade and she's in phonics 1. lol She reads at a higher grade level than her phonics level will indicate. I talked to her GenEd teacher about this (we have a few diff teachers and a tutor for her, so bear with me please on this lol) and at the start when we had our first teleconference she was asking if we'd ever had her held back or if we were open to it if she couldn't master the material, which really upset me since dd2's teacher is talking about her possibly grade skipping at the same time. Anyway, she has seen how I'm trying like crazy to help dd1 keep up and learn the material, and it was especially apparent with the AimsWeb testing that dd1 did earlier this month. She reads just below the core standards grade level that she should be reading at, but her phonics is barely there. She can't pick apart words and here the individual sounds in them, she doesn't know blends and digraphs and such, and she looked at me like I had 3 heads when we did study island last week and I took time to teach her silent E during study island time. Sooooo, at my last conference with the teacher we talked about her reading stuff and she told me that about 30% of kids don't learn to read by phonics, that it just doesn't work for them. PARTICULARLY when the child is dyslexic like dd1 most likely is (we don't have it confirmed yet, testing is still pending). Those kids, a whole language approach is better (read: 100% treated as sight words pretty much) and usually they won't be very good spellers later in life. She told me to keep working through phonics though, that she needs to have some phonics foundation even if it is torturing her to do it every day. Her brain isn't hardwired to get it, and she has a lisp on top of it so not only is she not able to break down words into individual sounds, but when she says those sounds on the times she can break them down she doesn't say certain sounds correctly and makes errors in the blends and digraphs that are there based on what she hears when she says the words and sounds. lol

But my 1st grader is doing great with phonics, she is going to finish up phonics K this next few weeks (we intentionally held her back in phonics so that she didn't pass up dd1 last school year, now we're seeing that she's going to no matter what with phonics so we're just turning her loose now) and she's just soaking it up like its nothing.

[kittie313]

Oh I almost forgot. What level of phonics are you working on? And what part of phonics is it? I know that for my girls, if we had started phonics K without them having learned their letter names and sounds beforehand that it would have been a complete disaster. If you are in first semester of phonics K, may I suggest you k-mail the teacher and tell her (or him) that you are taking a week or two to work on letter sounds in a different way, and then you go to Walmart and buy a copy of Leap Frog Word Factory (its a dvd in the toy section near the leapsters and such I think). My girls ALL learned their letter names and sounds from that dvd, and my 4yo also learned how the letters look so now she's working on starting to print capital letters. Have your dd watch it a couple times or more a day and learn the song, something about singing it, hearing the song, and seeing the letters danginc and doing the things they do really helped even my oldest dd learn her sounds at 4yo. That dvd is a favorite here, and its part of a 3 dvd set (I own all 3 dvd's lol the second teaches sounding out cvc words and some of the most popular digraphs and blends while the 3rd goes into expressive reading of stories and which one is it that does punctuation? I think its the 3rd one).

Of course that only works if you allow tv time. We do tv here, and computers too, so its just another way we approach educational needs with the kids. I also can hook you up with a few web sites for reading and phonics later if you like, I have a 5yo coming over to play soon for the day while his mom is at work so I need to finish dealing with a few things.