First, my thoughts are with Aunt Ann, who has been quite ill the last few weeks. Ann, we are thinking of you, and we miss you very much. We hope that you start feeling better soon and are glad to hear that Jan will be reading these posts to you. It isn't the same here at P&B without your comments. We love you very much.

Second, this morning we had parent-teacher conferences. They went well.

• M is a very good speller and is ranking even highter in math. She tested at a high third grade level in reading, though we think that she is doing even better than that, especially with reading. Her pronunciation and diction is also quite good – she was writing down words her teacher spoke at a 4th grade level. Her math skills are also at the fourth grade level. We are going to work with her on reading comprehension and determining author's intent, which is an area that she has shown that she needs some improvement. I think sometimes she moves too quickly and gets overconfident in reading comprehension; she needs to read the questions more carefully and re-read the passages to make sure she's not going too fast. Socially, M is very grounded and seems confident with herself. She isn't overly attached to any one girl but seems to have a nice group and friends and likes to spend a lot of time with her teacher.
• A is quiet in the classroom – she raises her hand but isn't always the first her with her hand up. She's very focused and doesn't have as many good friends in the class (especially compared with last year), which means she's not quite as social as she was in 1st grade. She tends to observe more before jumping in.  She has been doing a lot of writing, and tells great stories and spends a lot of time on details. Her sentence construction, contractions and punctuations are very good. She's reading at a high second grade level, and her math skills are a little higher than that (though her teacher thinks that if she were tested now, she would probably score higher). She's in advanced reading and math groups and seems to enjoy math and reading equally (which is rare, though true of both M&A).

Sounds like the year is off to a strong start for both girls! We are very proud of them.