I was able to get my son screened by the school nurse and his reading vision passes but his distance vision turned out to be 20/200. Yikes! Off to the optometrist for us, appointment is already made. I went ahead and ordered the Spectrum workbook to see if it can help me pinpoint what he's having trouble with and we're going to keep reading pretty much any chapter book he's willing to read. He just finished a book called Level 13 and liked it so I'm going to encourage him to keep trying that author. He started Harry Potter but didn't love it so I'm going to try Percy Jackson and see if he likes those better instead. I appreciate the audiobook recommendation as he responded well to those on a roadtrip last year. And most importantly, I'm going to remember to relax and let him mature some more; he's ten, there is plenty of time. Thank you so much for all of the help!

DRA is Developmental Reading Assessment and he has done them every quarter since at least 2nd grade, but I think going back further so it would not being something unfamiliar to him. I pulled out his first quarter score and he was a 48 up from a 47 at the beginning of the school year, which correlates to high 4th grade. The scale is where 50 is considered the beginning of fifth grade and then 55 would be halfway through, 60 is beginning of sixth grade, and so on. I do not know if his current school uses this same assessment system, but I'm now wondering if the old school was soft pedaling that he was falling behind in the fall as they knew we were moving and it wasn't going to be their problem anymore.

His vision was 20/20 last May though the new teacher mentioned he thinks my son might have trouble seeing, but when I asked for more info, I got no response. That is was also his response, or lack thereof when I asked to meet after report cards came home earlier this month as I want to know what he is seeing in the classroom. So far I have just been sending written notes which makes it easy to blow me off. The reading unit assessments that have come home are multiple choice with garbage answers that I as an adult could argue and I have nothing more from the new school besides the below grade level note on his report card. His old teacher had mentioned at our fall conference that he wasn't showing the expected rate of progression in his DRA assessments but nothing about reading below grade level and just an encouragement to read more. All of that aside, when I have my son read something and then tell me what he's read, he struggles with basic summarizing. He remembers some but not all of the details and can't give me a top level view at all. Thank you for the vision screening question by the way. I just looked up the school district policy on screening and they are supposed to test upon parental request so I will be pursuing that today as I can't go to the pediatrician for that until his next well child visit.

I have three kids all in public school. I had been afterschooling from last June through Christmas when we moved, disrupting everything. Their old school district is well regarded but very lax at the elementary level though rigorous once into middle and high school. Spelling is not taught at all, for example, and they only just moved back to any sort of phonics instruction with my youngest child, but my middle one never had the benefit of any sort of focused language arts instruction. I suppose they were supposed to pick up reading and writing through osmosis and my 5th grade son does not respond well to that manner of instruction. We moved to a new school district that is less rigorous, particularly in middle school, but at the elementary levels at least holds kids to a standard that my son is not meeting. He has fallen behind in reading especially and I have gotten zero feedback from his teacher, which has led me to believe this will be remediated only if I do it. All of my afterschooling prior to now has been in math and writing to fill in the obvious gaps of their old district, but I have no experience with reading instruction, as all of my kids were reading above or at grade level according to their old school. I have a ton of quality children's literature at home, though my son is not inclined to read any of it, preferring garbage graphic novels. I feel like a curmudgeon, but I hate them and feel like it's hindering his reading development at this point and that's all he checks out of the library and reads. When I have insisted on chapter books, he dutifully picks something out and then just won't read it. He does respond well to read aloud tales and I've been making a point to try stories I think boys would find appealing. He has a decent amount of non-fiction available to him as well, but I don't think he really reads any of it. He does memorize fairly well so he has had no problems yet with history or science, but I know the reading for history will be beyond him in middle school unless something changes. By inclination, he tends to laziness and lack of conscientiousness and will spend more time and energy avoiding schoolwork then it would take to actually complete said work. Performance-wise, his skills strike me as only at the 4th grade level despite the fact that he tests at the 85th percentile for intelligence. In reading The Well-Trained Mind, he seems a better fit still for grammar stage than logic stage so I guess I ought to trust my gut and start with the 4th grade recommendations? My concern is that his reading base might be weak enough that might not be the right place to start and I have no idea how to properly assess his true skill level. I am open to any suggestions short of pulling him from school and our schedules are such that I can work with him at least an hour everyday.