Repeating Spanish 1

[Anonymous]

Middle school is saying my child should repeat Spanish 1 next year in the 7th grade despite getting a B in both marking periods of this school year so far.

What am I missing here? I’ve emailed the school - no response yet. Trying to figure out how to address this with my kid who is feeling down about it.

[Anonymous]

That’s ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

That makes no sense. I’m interested to hear what they say.

[Anonymous]

That is really strange—sometimes it’s a glitch, so you should confirm the statement first. And keep us posted!

[Anonymous]

Maybe with inflated grades, a B is really a D.

[Anonymous]

Ha, my son is getting a B and they basically strongly implied that he should not be repeating it when we asked. His teacher told them in class that they should only repeat the class if they get Ds.

[Anonymous]

Parent of high schoolers to offer another perspective. I wish I had slowed my kids down in foreign language and made sure they nailed the basics because levels 1-3 did not do much for them in that regard. When they started to struggle in levels 4-5 it was too late to retake a year (you can really only get away with that in level 1-2). Granted this could be a remote-learning effect as they both went through levels 3-4 during the remote school year.

Anyway they could always progress to level 2 because I agree Bs are fine, but don’t be afraid to have them repeat that one of you are sensing some lack of grounding in the basics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ha, my son is getting a B and they basically strongly implied that he should not be repeating it when we asked. His teacher told them in class that they should only repeat the class if they get Ds.

What a terrible idea. It is so easy to get A's in MCPS that if your kids are getting poor grades on classes that are foundational, you should consider having your child repeat it. I say this as a parent with a child in a higher level language. $h*t hits the fan if they don't have good basic foundation and it will be too late to back pedal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ha, my son is getting a B and they basically strongly implied that he should not be repeating it when we asked. His teacher told them in class that they should only repeat the class if they get Ds.

What a terrible idea. It is so easy to get A's in MCPS that if your kids are getting poor grades on classes that are foundational, you should consider having your child repeat it. I say this as a parent with a child in a higher level language. $h*t hits the fan if they don't have good basic foundation and it will be too late to back pedal.

PP who posted that we were advised to not repeat Spanish 1AB here. We decided he'll do Spanish 2AB next year and, depending on his comfort level, consider repeating that in 8th, as a lot of folks says Spanish 3 is where things start getting very hard. He has a tutor now and has improved some between 1st and 2nd MP. I obviously don't know how other kids in his class are doing, but this class does not seem to be an "easy A" to us, as the teacher is very nitpicky, the rubric is very tough, usually the kids copy words off the board and only get word lists the day before the tests etc (I've posted about this before.) They also get a single retake per marking period, of a quiz or assignment that's not a unit test (which he didn't even realize until the last 2 weeks of MP2 - sigh, he's still figuring out all the rules for all his classes.)

[Anonymous]

I'm a pushy sort of parent and the last person to tell you that kids should repeat a year of any subject.

Having said that, there is no room for error once they get to high school. Their content mastery has to be as perfect as possible, because the classes are more challenging and the pace is brutal, particularly if they take all advanced courses.

So... get a tutor in middle school. It will solidify knowledge and fill in any gaps before high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a pushy sort of parent and the last person to tell you that kids should repeat a year of any subject.

Having said that, there is no room for error once they get to high school. Their content mastery has to be as perfect as possible, because the classes are more challenging and the pace is brutal, particularly if they take all advanced courses.

So... get a tutor in middle school. It will solidify knowledge and fill in any gaps before high school.

PP who got a tutor.
Yep, we plan to continue with the tutor over the summer. This is the first tutor we've ever had for either kid. Son is a straight A student otherwise (scoring high 90th percentiles on MAPs as well, so not just due to grade inflation.) We were mostly worried that he wasn't "getting it" in terms of either what he needed to learn, how he needed to learn it, or what the teacher expected, so decided to intervene early.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parent of high schoolers to offer another perspective. I wish I had slowed my kids down in foreign language and made sure they nailed the basics because levels 1-3 did not do much for them in that regard. When they started to struggle in levels 4-5 it was too late to retake a year (you can really only get away with that in level 1-2). Granted this could be a remote-learning effect as they both went through levels 3-4 during the remote school year.

Anyway they could always progress to level 2 because I agree Bs are fine, but don’t be afraid to have them repeat that one of you are sensing some lack of grounding in the basics.

+1

That's a great point about it not being a bad idea to repeat the lower level foreign language. Yes the jump from level 2 to 3 can be brutal, and it's better to make sure the student has a solid foundation before moving to 3. There should be a smoother transition between 2 and 3 aside from having to have a tutor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parent of high schoolers to offer another perspective. I wish I had slowed my kids down in foreign language and made sure they nailed the basics because levels 1-3 did not do much for them in that regard. When they started to struggle in levels 4-5 it was too late to retake a year (you can really only get away with that in level 1-2). Granted this could be a remote-learning effect as they both went through levels 3-4 during the remote school year.

Anyway they could always progress to level 2 because I agree Bs are fine, but don’t be afraid to have them repeat that one of you are sensing some lack of grounding in the basics.

Another high school parent here -- I would go so far as to say don't have your child do any more language in middle school and then start with Spanish 1 in 9th grade. Then they'll have 4 years of language (9th-12th grade). Colleges don't look at middle school language so regardless of how much language they take in middle, they'll still need 3-4 years in high school.

[Anonymous]

Wait til they hit grad school where a B is essentially failing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wait til they hit grad school where a B is essentially failing.

Former professor here - grad school is graded on a huuuge curve so it's not really comparable. Students in my program had to maintain a 3.0 so there was huge pressure on profs to give high grades, leading to no Cs at all. Basically B- was the worst grade they could get. I'm sure it's different in different places but just sharing my experience.