Student Evaluation

This week at the girls' school is parent conference week. Each student's parents get twenty minutes with the teacher to hear about the progress in the class and ask questions. Today was the conference for Inwe.

You know it is going to be a good meeting when the teacher opens with "I wish I had 12 more Inwe's in my class."

Here are the highlights of Inwe's school progress:

• She has an "extensive vocabulary" and "uses the words perfectly".
  
• "Socially she is very adept" and "is a peacemaker". (Inwe apparently won't let cliques happen in her class.)
  
• "She should rule the world when she's older."
• "She's very confident in herself and expresses her opinions freely when we discuss a book or anything else."
  

I was also shown her results for the PALS (Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening) instrument used in the state of Virginia. I can't remember all of the actual scores for the subtests, but I'll attempt it.

• Rhyme Awareness: Inwe scored 10/10. The benchmark is 5/10.
• Beginning Sound Awareness: 10/10. Benchmark: 5/10.
• Alphabet Knowledge (lowercase letters): 21/26. She didn't know q and mixed up her b and d. Called the lowercase l an I, and called the u an n. I don't remember the benchmark.
• Letter Sounds: 21/26. She couldn't remember the sounds that Ch, Sh, and Th make, although she self-corrected on the Th sound. One of the letters that she couldn't give a sound for was "G". Weird. I forgot the other letter she didn't remember the sound.
• Spelling: She could write the first letter of each of the five words, but didn't do well with the rest of the sounds in the word, although she is beginning to distinguish the ending sound. I think her score was 5/20. That benchmark was 2/20.
• Concept of Word: All I can remember is that she did really well with this one. The specifics elude me.
• Word Recognition in Isolation: This is an extra test given to children who show some reading prowess. Inwe did well with this subtest, but again I can't remember the specifics.

The website link above to the PALS explains the tests briefly.