More on retention and to everyone who posted

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Home : 2005 : March : 17

More on retention and to everyone who posted
By Cathy-Dee

Hi Robin,

I think it would be great to have worked with someone like Dr. Light. I'm not sure where I first learned about his scale but I have found it very useful and it has swayed my decisions a few times on those borderline
type of students.
I do think one has to be cautious with retention and definitely interventions, etc., need to be done prior to the final decision in hopes that a student can be pulled up to grade level.
In my situation I have students who enter my classroom who are very low with little or no support at home in terms of education. So for me it's not so much whether to hold

some back or not, it's how to narrow down how many I will end up holding back as we can only hold back so many students before our division would question what we are doing.

This year I have 3 who I know even at this stage will be needing a second year in grade one. Then I have another 2-3 who are my borderline students. Unfortunately in my school district and in our province in general funding has been an issue for the last few years and it is the students who suffer. We only have a half-time special education teacher. I have a TA for one 40 minute class per day. And we have one early literacy Teacher assistant who can take 8 students per day (and over the year about 24 students in total). It becomes so frustrating when you know that with just a bit of extra resource and time some of these students could push through to the next grade with enough skills to allow them to succeed in it.

Out of my 3 I am holding back, they are all students who at this time still do not know most of the letter sounds, are not reading at all, only know their numbers to 10 and struggle with math in general.

My borderline students are generally doing ok in math and for the most part are at a beginning stage in reading. They do know most of the letter sounds and so my aim is to get them reading at least to a mid-grade 1 level as then they have the basics in place to move forward.

The decision to retain students is definitely not an easy one but for some students it really is the best thing for them in my humble opinion.