Lucy Ellis, Underachiever.

It's time for the end-of-the-school year DIBELS testing.  Lucy's test was yesterday, and when I picked her up from school I asked her, "So, how did it go?"  She replied, "I don't think I did very well, Mom."  She said she had a thought in her head that wouldn't go away, and it made it hard to concentrate.  She was concerned that she would have to repeat 1st grade.  I assured her that they wouldn't make her do 1st grade all over again, and that I would call her teacher in the morning and ask how she did.

So this morning, I had a nice, albeit short, conversation with Lucy's teacher.  She gave me Lucy's scores, and of course, Lucy did extremely well.  On one portion of the test, Lucy scored a 65/40.  Well above benchmark.  There's also a part of the test that measures oral reading fluency.  The child is given 3 reading passages, the test is one minute long for each passage, and then the highest and lowest scores are discarded.  When Lucy's teacher looked up her score for this part of the DIBELS, she said, "(gasp) Oh. My. Gosh."  I said, "What?  What?!"  The teacher then said, "Lucy is in the 99th percentile.  Her score is off the charts.  The benchmark is 40 correct words per minute.  Lucy read 148."

The teacher also told me that Lucy is such a caring girl.  She helps the students who need help, and yesterday, she comforted a boy in her class whose feelings were hurt and he started to cry.  She went right over to him and rubbed his back and said, "It's okay, Elijah."

It's such a joy to watch my children grow, and Lucy is becoming an incredibly marvelous human being.  I'm so lucky.