![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Sophie has been back in school for two weeks now. It isn't going terribly, though we have yet to have this meeting with the teacher (that will come at the end of the month) and so it's hard to say how she is doing in terms of things like "whether she is doing her work" and "whether she is learning things".
We knew that she was the only girl left in the upper half of her class; what we found out after school started was that she is in fact the only third-grader in her class at all. (Distribution is 8 1st / 7 2nd / 1 3rd / 8 4th.) My first reaction on hearing this was to relax - you can't really ask for more of an opportunity for an individualized curriculum. Socially she seems okay - she hasn't reported problems with the older boys so far, and she has (as I sort of expected) made friends with some first graders. Also, the removal of her best friend from the class seems to have removed a point of conflict between her and one of the 2nd grade girls, who I guess were rivals for said friend's attention.
And, although she isn't in a bilingual class after all, she does get an extra treat - English lessons start in 3rd grade here normally, and it seems that all the 3rd and 4th graders in the school do this together with an external teacher. This makes Sophie one of three native English speakers, all of whom get some special role assigned in the class. I don't quite understand what her role is but it does occasionally involve SPEAKING at a PODIUM, and she couldn't be more delighted.
It also occurred to me that, even though we couldn't get her into the bilingual primary class, Vienna also does bilingual education at secondary level and this has a new round of intake procedures, so that kids who are not already in the bilingual system can also get in. When I mentioned it to her the conversation went like this:
Me: "you know, even though we couldn't get you into the class up the road, there are bilingual Gymnasien that you could try for next year."
S: "...but are they science Gymnasien?" [n.b. Austria has "Gymnasium", which is language-heavy, and "Realgymnasium", which is more science-focused.]
Me: "yep."
S: "The gods love me!!"
I think this will be a good plan, since as much fun as she is having now, I think having to do mandatory English lessons in Gymnasium where they take the work more seriously could get kind of boring for her. (The daughter of a friend who just started Gymnasium, who is also German/English speaking at home, reports having homework that involved writing down the numbers in English from 1 to 20. They seem not to have much provision for native kids not to have to go through the pointless motions.) So we'll take S to the open day in November, and see if we can use this to motivate her to do her best work in the next couple of years.
We knew that she was the only girl left in the upper half of her class; what we found out after school started was that she is in fact the only third-grader in her class at all. (Distribution is 8 1st / 7 2nd / 1 3rd / 8 4th.) My first reaction on hearing this was to relax - you can't really ask for more of an opportunity for an individualized curriculum. Socially she seems okay - she hasn't reported problems with the older boys so far, and she has (as I sort of expected) made friends with some first graders. Also, the removal of her best friend from the class seems to have removed a point of conflict between her and one of the 2nd grade girls, who I guess were rivals for said friend's attention.
And, although she isn't in a bilingual class after all, she does get an extra treat - English lessons start in 3rd grade here normally, and it seems that all the 3rd and 4th graders in the school do this together with an external teacher. This makes Sophie one of three native English speakers, all of whom get some special role assigned in the class. I don't quite understand what her role is but it does occasionally involve SPEAKING at a PODIUM, and she couldn't be more delighted.
It also occurred to me that, even though we couldn't get her into the bilingual primary class, Vienna also does bilingual education at secondary level and this has a new round of intake procedures, so that kids who are not already in the bilingual system can also get in. When I mentioned it to her the conversation went like this:
Me: "you know, even though we couldn't get you into the class up the road, there are bilingual Gymnasien that you could try for next year."
S: "...but are they science Gymnasien?" [n.b. Austria has "Gymnasium", which is language-heavy, and "Realgymnasium", which is more science-focused.]
Me: "yep."
S: "The gods love me!!"
I think this will be a good plan, since as much fun as she is having now, I think having to do mandatory English lessons in Gymnasium where they take the work more seriously could get kind of boring for her. (The daughter of a friend who just started Gymnasium, who is also German/English speaking at home, reports having homework that involved writing down the numbers in English from 1 to 20. They seem not to have much provision for native kids not to have to go through the pointless motions.) So we'll take S to the open day in November, and see if we can use this to motivate her to do her best work in the next couple of years.
Tags:
(no subject)
Date: 2019-09-14 06:16 pm (UTC)