Assessment 2020-21: Ladybug

 

Ladybug turned 10 years old at the start of the school year.  She began the year in a stable place, being treated with CBD oil for her anxiety (which I believe is the true cause for her ADHD-ish behaviors), and ended the year in a not-quite-but-close-to stable place.  She did have several negative behavioral flare-ups which affected her ability to complete schoolwork successfully, but they were not chronic problems. 

She is diagnosed with an intellectual disability, and while we recognize that as real and work within her limits, we also recognize that she is capable of learning, and we push her to extend her limits when and where possible.

 

Here was Ladybug's plan for the 2020-21 school year:

Academy

Language Lessons for a Living Education 3, Master Books

Language Arts 2 & 3, Core Skills

Explode the Code 4 and 4 1/2

Writing With Ease Level 2, Well-Trained Mind

Literature Grade 2, Memoria Press

Finish Arithmetic 2 and start Arithmetic 3, Rod and Staff

Prima Latina (1/3 of the curriculum), Memoria Press

The Care and Keeping of You, Jr.

101 Favorite Bible Stories

Embroidery sampler

 

She participated actively in Academy.  Ladybug tends to lose nouns--in particular proper nouns--so she sends her hand in the air to answer a question and then can't put her answer into words.  I can see that she can either picture her answer or remember in some way beyond spoken language.  But she does love the stories we read, and she volunteers enthusiastically to narrate and answer questions.  She tends to either get the big picture beautifully or not get it at all--and I've not yet found a pattern for why this happens.  When she can't find the big picture, she gets bogged down in details--unable to choose what is key and what is not--but her memory for those details can knock my socks off!

Repetition is key to her learning.

She needs to learn it, review it, re-learn it, review it, learn it again, and repeat the whole process a few more times before mastery.  She's more likely to memorize facts in the abstract than she is likely to correctly apply what she learns in a practical way.

But she does eventually remember, understand, and apply what she is taught. 

 

Ladybug completed Language Lessons for a Living Education 3 with significant guidance.  She was unable to complete the assessments successfully without assistance, so I considered this 3rd grade language arts curriculum a success at exposing her to several 3rd grade skills that she will be re-exposed to several more times before I expect to see mastery.   101 Favorite Bible Stories was integrated into that curriculum.

She completed Core Skills Language Arts 2 successfully and mostly independently.  However, when level 3 reduced her to tears or required one-on-one assistance through each lesson and ended without comprehension, I put that book away.  

Explode the Code 4 and 4 1/2 worked well as spelling texts.  Ladybug likes these workbooks, and they're wonderfully repetitive.  Ladybug finished both books, scoring in the high 60% range on the book 4 assessment and in the low 80% range on the book 4 1/2 assessment.  These scores represent her spelling in isolation.  It does not extend into spelling during composition.

Writing with Ease Level 2 made her cry.  She liked copying sentences, but she did not like having to remember those sentences on her own.  The combination of capitalization, punctuation, and spelling sent her over the edge most days.  However, it did improve her ability to write a sentence.  I saw an improvement in remembering to put a period at the end of a sentence and to capitalize proper nouns and the first words in a sentence.  She completed about 20 of these lessons, and when days got busy, I allowed them to fall by the wayside in order to have fewer reasons for her to melt down.

Ladybug liked Memoria Press Literature Grade 2!  

Mostly.

She liked the stories.  She liked it when the questions were literal.  

She did not like re-reading the stories.  She did not like it when the questions required some reasoning to arrive at the correct answer.  

Nonetheless, when given the freedom to choose what school subject she would do on a given day, she would always start with literature.  She finished the entire grade 2 program.

Math is Ladybug's Waterloo.  After a summer break, we had to review a significant portion of grade 1 and most of grade 2 arithmetic for her to be able to pick up where she left off.  She did it!  Then she went on to slowly complete all of her grade 2 books.  

The day she got to start Grade 3 Arithmetic was such a proud day!!!!  She worked so hard each day, and then one day all of the facts just disappeared.

It nearly broke both of our hearts.

We stopped and reviewed for a few weeks, and the light turned on again.  She was able to resume working her way through the lessons and eventually start multiplication.

It. was. so. hard.

She would get it and lose it.  Get it and lose it again.  Eventually, I put that program away and chose to have her go back and have some success and build momentum with Math Lessons for a Living Education Grade 2.  

That's where she is now--a little over half way through that review book.  She loves the lessons.  She feels a sense of accomplishment over being able to complete them, and I hope what we are doing now is helping her feel that she can succeed at math.

Ladybug and I worked together on 1 of 5 units of Prima Latina.  When we stopped, she could recite what she'd learned in that first unit with 90% accuracy.  While there was time in the school year to work on and master another unit, arithmetic was taking up too much emotional energy to use any on Latin.  Though we didn't reach our goal of mastering 1/3 of the curriculum, and she has long since forgotten everything she did memorize, the sheer joy of knowing some Latin made the work worth the effort.

 

She loved reading The Care and Keeping of You Jr.  She has it in her stack of books that she's allowed to take into her room for quiet time, and she reviews it often.  She asks questions and has occasionally matched what she's read to what's happening to her body.

We never did work on the embroidery sampler.

She did crochet and draw and build things with her Kiwi Crate kits, so she was quite creative and developed good artistic skills.  

The embroidery sampler is still waiting. 

Ladybug is a prisoner of her past trauma in many ways.  But she is also a fighting champion!  The world confuses her very much, and she struggles to do for real what she knows is right in theory.

She wants to do what is right.

She wants it so much.

Her heart is pure and good even if her brain is cloudy and confused.  

I think by continuing to do our best to understand her and meet her where she is, Ladybug will keep overcoming.

I find myself thinking this quote applies to her education:

“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; 

and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”

 --Francis of Assisi