Progress Reports

Progress reports came home from school on Friday. Caitlyn has amazed me once again. She has all A's right now in her subjects which is fantastic. But that's not the part that amazed me. They are doing DIBLES testing again, it was done earlier in September. They don't look at as many categories as they did last year; this year they only look at nonsense word fluency and oral reading fluency.

Benchmark for nonsense word fluency is 50 words per minute. Caitlyn is reading 54. So she is meeting the benchmark.

Benchmark for oral reading fluency is 44 words per minute. Caitlyn is reading 98. 98!!!!!! The benchmark for June is 90. The average words per minute read by a third grader is between 100-110. To say I am stunned is an understatement. This kid is cruising along in the area of reading. And what's even more amazing is not that she reads at this level. Cause we all know decoding words isn't the most important part of reading. What's important is whether or not you can comprehend what you have read. And lo and behold, she is.

On Thursday last week, she read her first chapter book completely on her own. She was so very proud of herself for reading a book that had close to 100 pages. And I think her mom is pretty stinkin proud of her too. Then over the weekend, she read another chapter book. So now she is all gung ho to go through her bookshelf and clean out the books that are just too easy for her. And I am all about that seeing as we have books crammed in every nook and cranny of that shelf and 2 tubs full of them as well. Now I need to figure out what to do with all of them.

In other news, Matt's football team is tied for first place in his conference. He is playing the team he is tied with on Friday. So any good vibes you can send on over to Chicago would be spectacular. I would love for him to win his conference.

My school district has signed a new contract. So there will be no striking for us. Thank goodness. Things are crazy there as usual. Though it seems to be a much calmer year than it was last year. We had a couple "high profile" kids leave at the end of last year, so I think that's the reason.

As for my master's program, I have 2 really intense classes this term. One of the classes is online and I swear it is more work than the classes I sit in class for. The class that I have on Thursday is a huge amount of work. And I am convinced the instructor doesn't like me. Which is fine with me, so long as I can manage to get through until December and get the credit for the class. I currently have a 4.0 going and I would like to keep it that way. Let's just hope that the fact that this woman doesn't like me doesn't interfere with that ;)

Caitlyn is leaving for Atlanta on Saturday for a couple of days. She is going there with Rita to visit Jimmy. She is ecstatic about it and has been counting down the days for weeks. I am a little nervous though. Not because she will be away for 2 days in a different state. That happens all the time in the summer when she heads up to Wisconsin with Matt or Rita. What I am nervous about is not being on the plane with her. She isn't afraid of flying, she enjoys it actually. I just worry that if something were to happen, that I wouldn't be there to comfort her. I am sure it will all be fine and she will have a wonderful flight, but it scares me a bit.