Abecedarian Placement

[Tawlas]

Just got my nearly 10yo dd to complete the Placement Assessment.  I was wondering if I should put her in C or D, but according to this, it should probably B - and not even the short version!  I think she rushed a bit for the first nonsense word list, but that's not even a real big component of placement (only for a note on supplementing).  Wow.  I expected higher?  She finished REWARDS last year and I was pleased with her progress.  Id say she's reading approximately grade 4 level right now but her fluency is quite low.  Any thoughts?  Are the placement assessments accurate?  

[Lecka]

I used Abecedarian Level B and I thought it was good and where my son placed.

 

Maybe she has skill gaps and the review would help, if it is review she will move through it more quickly.

 

Another option is to see about emailing the company. I asked a question on some type of forum or yahoo group at the time, and for some questions there would be a response from the company, iirc. You really might be able to try calling or emailing, it can't hurt.

 

Another option is, if you really think she knows the material, then you could look for a fluency program. You might need to work on fluency separately (or really supplementally I guess) to Abecedarian. I did need to. My son needed a lot of work on fluency and I did recommended fluency practices.

 

But the material covered in Level B is not the same as what is covered in Rewards. I think it is possible for her to do well with Rewards but still have gaps covered by Level B. It is not a crazy thing to have happen at all. If you look at the phonics covered in Level B and you have not really worked with her on it ---- she really could have some gaps.

 

Overall I would not worry about level B being too low, and then I might look at fluency in addition.

 

Also, I wonder if there is overlap between level c and rewards. I think it makes sense to cover level b if level c has more overlap with rewards. Level b would not have much overlap I don't think.

 

Sometimes things are covered in different orders and then it is more like "what do the levels cover?" Than just looking at the higher level.

[caedmyn]

My DD who I believe has stealth dyslexia did Abecedarian Short Level B which is what she placed into, and then Rewards Secondary, and then ABCD Level C.  I felt like Rewards helped her more than ABCD, but the focus wasn't quite the same.  Rewards was definitely easier for her than ABCD Short B was so I think she needed ABCD too, but the improvement wasn't as noticeable with ABCD.  ABCD Level C is more like Rewards but I didn't feel that it was all that helpful after doing Rewards.  Now she is working through the free fluency drill sheets from the ABCD workshop and continuing to work on quick recall of vowel sounds from Rewards, and on multi-syllable words.  Her initial problems were with sounding out anything unfamiliar, especially nonsense words and longer words, but her overall reading fluency was good (was reading at about a 6th grade level as a 4th grader).  

 

I have emailed the ABCD guy a few times and he has always responded and been helpful, so I'd say to email him with your questions and see what he says.