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If your child is ahead, reads a lot, but isn't improving....


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So I don't know if this is a fluke or what, but Miss E's reading "progress" per the STAR stats has been pretty level this year.  She is still way ahead and still reads a lot more than any other kid I know, but somehow she doesn't seem to be breaking into that higher level as far as the tests are concerned.

 

The teacher suggests it's a matter of higher level vocabulary and comprehending short stories / paragraphs.  I do have some strategies for vocabulary (she's a young 7 and hasn't been exposed to everything out there).  Not sure about the short stories/ paragraphs.  I could have her do some short reading comprehension passages etc., but is this overkill for a kid who reads so much?  (She reads all kinds of fiction and nonfiction.)  She seems to understand and remember what she reads, as far as I can tell, as long as it's not way above her experience / maturity level.

 

I don't know, my gut tells me to leave it be and let life experience take care of it.  What do you think?  Have you had a child like this and did you intervene?

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It can be the test. Some of the questions on those computerized "reading comprehension" tests are idiotic, and other call for recollection of minute details that a student might simply have forgotten - which is not an indication of comprehension.

I would be inclined to ignore it. YOU know that your kid is reading, and YOU know whether she understands or not better than any computer, because you can talk to her about the books.

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The more I study up about helping my kids to be great readers who engage with great literature, the more I detest the online reading "comprehension" quizzes. (Our school uses Raz-kids but I presume they're similar.) Who the heck *cares* if the hedgehog got into the mitten before or after the hare? That isn't what reading is *about*.

 

DS used to ace his Raz-kids tests when the reading level was really way too easy, but now it's on this cusp where it's still very easy but maybe one vocabulary word in the whole passage throws him, or else the couple of brain cells he actually has to devote to decoding mean that he doesn't have as much cognitive energy left to pay attention or care about the minute but lower-order questions they ask. When we read real books together he can summarize previous chapters and pick out important points, and engage in discussions about why characters did things and what might happen next. He can relate disparate experiences ("That's your Achilles tendon. Did you know Achilles was a Greek warrior who fought in the Trojan War?" and he lights up.) That's good enough for me.

 

I know this kind of thing is hard for you but I would really, really try to let go of grades and levels. If your DD isn't able to make the STAR test give her the reading level she wants to be reading, then have her read the higher level stuff and flunk her STAR points. It will be okay, it truly will. Pay attention to the kid, and the learning, not the grades. The grades are one tiny piece of the feedback picture that lets you know about the *learning* that is going on.

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I know this kind of thing is hard for you but I would really, really try to let go of grades and levels. If your DD isn't able to make the STAR test give her the reading level she wants to be reading, then have her read the higher level stuff and flunk her STAR points. It will be okay, it truly will. Pay attention to the kid, and the learning, not the grades. The grades are one tiny piece of the feedback picture that lets you know about the *learning* that is going on.

 

Actually, this time, I wasn't even thinking about that.  (I know I've posted in the past about my other daughter not being allowed to read at her level of interest.)  I got an "annual progress report" for the school year, with the four quarterly STAR tests charted, and it just seemed strange that her "progress" seems almost flat.  It reminds me of the debate on whether "they all level out by 3rd grade."  And yet I can tell you that her reading has become more sophisticated over the past year.  A year ago she was all about the Rainbow Fairies, and now she's into much more challenging books such as How to Train your Dragon and the MTH Fact Trackers (both of which she's reading for fun, and not testing on for AR).  She completed her annual AR points goal a while ago.

 

I do care about grades, but this particular kid has been on honor roll since the beginning of 1st grade, and that is fine with me.  She does tend to get "B" in reading, which is odd (especially when her sister gets As), but it does not really bother me.

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Is the school offering instruction in reading comprehension (ie literary devices) to move her along, or is she expected to figure it out herself via reading a lot?

 

One of the problems students have with AR on the higher level quizzes is that they don't know what the question is asking.  The questions aren't all at the same level as the texts, sometimes they are so far above that the kids are wagging. Now and again, the question is a very obscure detail, to prevent those who watched the movie instead of reading the book from scoring lots of points dishonestly...but I have to say, one of the HPs was so obscure that I couldn't answer it a month after reading the book and neither could my fourth grade buddy who was chatting my ear off about the book in the previous month. I encouraged him to shrug that off and move on. He now has a free ride to a state U, so I'd say he did fine without acing every AR question, or restricting himself to grade level fiction.

 

I don't think she has ever gotten any reading instruction at her level in school.  She is doing the exact same work and chapter tests as her sister, who is in Title I tutoring.

 

The AR testing, which is separate from the quarterly STAR testing, is a whole other animal.  Miss E will get anywhere from 40% (on those dumb "leveled readers" she's forced to read) to 100% (on interesting biographies or girly fiction) on any given day.  I don't know why she bothers to take tests on books she didn't enjoy or didn't really read (??) but it's out of my control.

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