Hooray for Ryan!!!!

For those of that I have tortured with my venting over Ryan and his struggles at school.....this is for you! I am not sure how good my scan will work, but Ryan finally passed a spelling test! I realize it's early in the year, but Ryan has really struggled and I suspected last year he was, but he had a pretty laid back teacher that always assured me he was doing great. The start of this year was very rough! He was put in the German immersion class so I worried from day 1. The first week of school went okay, but the second week he had a note home about not completeing work in class so he had extra home work. Then came more emails and notes. The teacher asked for help in the classroom so I volunteered. I needed hours for my class (that I just finished) and I really wanted to see Ryan at school. Sure enough all my fears were true. He sat very quietly in class not listening to a word the teacher said and refused to read when she asked him to. Everyday after school homework is a fight and it was last year too. I finally told Zach that I had to do something so he would not fail 2nd grade and the fighting had to stop. We tried talking with him, taking things away, everything!

Finally I decided it was time to make up my own homework for him starting with spelling. He was getting maybe 3 words right a week and mispelling half of the others words in the sentence (the teacher makes up silly sentences with their spelling words to work on the site words they should already know).

Well after the first week of "mom's homework" Ryan got a 100% on his test. And this was not the end. The next day he took his pre-test for the new list of words. The night before he had written each 5 times for me and the sentences 3 times each. It paid off because he got a 100% on the pre-test which means he doens't have to take the post test! He was so excited and said "Mom I just have to say thank you for my homework. I didn't like it, but I am so happy I got all my words right. It makes me feel good." I am so proud of Ryan. I knew he could do it, he just needed a little more help. I bought him workbooks a the BX to help him with math and a few other areas and he has really had fun with them. We will keep writing the words out each week until he thinks we can do a practice test like the teacher gives to study them.