Parent-teacher conferences

We had Ben's parent-teacher conference last night and as we suspected, he is not making the progress he should this year. He is still struggling in reading, writing and math and is not carrying strategies he learns in one area through to another. He is in the reading improvement plan, but this year they do not do 1-on-1 teaching and he is in a group with 4 boys from 2nd grade. He is also going to start doing small group math sessions. We have definitely not been working on things at home as much as last year, homework is much more loosely organized this year. Of course Ben has lost his competition at home so he's not trying as hard. He will always make the minimum amount of effort to get by and obviously what he is doing now is not enough. Both his class and reading teachers are going to start sending more books home for him to read at night and I am going to meet with his teacher once a week after school to talk about different learning strategies that I can use at home. On the plus side, he is doing well in the class in general and does well at writing stories, he just does not have the basics and this is hindering him. He is also getting more aware that the other kids are much further ahead than he is and that is having a negative impact on his performance at school.