Parent-teacher conference season is here for our Nashville and Brentwood families. Your child’s teacher spends about six hours a day with them, so this is a great chance to hear what learning actually looks like for your child this year.

“How are they doing?” is a great question, but it often gets a general answer like “Great!” or “Doing well!” Asking more specific questions helps teachers give you more specific answers.

Whether your conference is coming up or has already happened, here is a simple framework you can use to ask questions or think through what you heard. As experts in evidence-based instruction, we’ve found these three outcomes matter for telling us whether a child is truly learning. For each one, we’ll share what it looks like when it’s strong and what it looks like when your child needs more support.

Retention: Does It Stick?

We want our students to remember what they’ve learned, even when they aren’t practicing it every day.

What strong retention looks like: Your child learned the alphabet early in school, and they don’t practice it every day now. But they still know it. It might also look like a child who learned their letter sounds in August and is still using them now, or a child who mastered addition facts last year and doesn’t have to relearn them this year.

What it looks like when they need more support: A skill your child had last month seems to have disappeared. They need the same lesson retaught again and again, or they seem to start from scratch every time.

The question to ask: “Does my child hold onto new skills, or do they need to be retaught often?”

Endurance: Can They Keep Going, Even With Distractions?

We want our students to stick with a skill for longer periods of time and keep working even when there’s a little distraction around them.

What strong endurance looks like: A child who reads with the same speed and accuracy at minute 20 as at minute 5. Or a child who finishes the whole page of math problems with the same accuracy as the first few. They can keep working at a table with classmates talking nearby, or when their sibling is playing near them as they do their homework.

What it looks like when they need more support: A child who reads confidently for the first five minutes and then fades. Or a child who does fine at a quiet desk but loses focus when classmates are talking nearby. It could also be a child who does the first few math problems carefully, then rushes or gives up halfway down the page.

The question to ask: “Can my child keep using their skills for longer stretches, even with a little distraction around them?”

Application: Can They Use It?

We want our students to use what they’ve learned in new situations, not just in the exact way it was taught. That includes more complex tasks that combine several skills at once.

What strong application looks like: A child who knows their math facts and uses them to solve a multi-step word problem. They figure out what the question is asking, choose the right operation, and solve it. In reading and writing, it’s a child who spells words correctly on Friday’s spelling test and in their own stories, or who finds the main idea in a longer chapter, not just a short paragraph.

What it looks like when they need more support: A child who does great on a page of math facts, then freezes when those same facts show up in a word problem. Or a child who spells every word right on the test, then misspells those same words in a story. The skill is there, but it hasn’t made the jump to a new situation yet.

The question to ask: “Can my child use what they’ve learned in new situations, or only the way it was taught?”

Why These Three?

Each of these tells you something different, and a child can be strong in one area while still building another. For example, your child might remember last year’s math facts (retention) but get stuck on word problems (application). Another child might use their skills well in new situations (application) but lose focus after five minutes (endurance).

Looking at all three helps you ask the right questions to support them. All three matter, and all three depend on a solid foundation (see our last post, Two Months In and Still Struggling? Start With the Foundation).

What If Your Child Needs Support?

If you find that your child needs support in any of these areas, that’s okay. It’s still early in the school year, and it’s great that you caught it. It just tells us where they need more practice, whether that’s holding onto skills, sticking with them longer, or using them in new ways.

At Fit Learning, we focus on practicing skills, just like a pickleball player drills their serves until they’re automatic. With the right practice, your child can show all three of these important outcomes at school.

Want to know exactly where your child stands? Our skills assessment pinpoints exactly where your child’s gaps are, with precise, measured data. Our learners typically see a full year’s academic growth in just 40 hours of instruction, in person at our Brentwood, TN learning lab or virtually from anywhere. Schedule a free consultation or call 629-339-8004.