https://news.stanford.edu/2015/05/28/reading-brain-phonics-052815/?fbclid=IwAR0zTSQcd-JdY_G3iOvEVmM7IbKc1OlbTaErhXXGlC9LTXjRzYex3d4GMio This just came across my feed today and I thought it was good for what you were looking for.

My dd has this class she takes that was encouraging her to read for prizes before she was ready to read on her own. I was at first trying to look up a books level that she could read to find others but I realized that these books are not leveled at all based on decodeability and I needed to wait until she had enough phonics patterns down to do books like Frog and Toad. I was looking for examples of kids reading and found lessons from various schools of guided reading groups. There were a lot teachers telling kids to look at the picture or to think of context especially in the early levels. Teachers were going over words before the lesson by sight not by sounding them out and teaching the pattern. Then they searched there books for these words then read. They did have the kids read through some of the words by sound and teach sounds but it was very hodge podge and they did encourage guessing from context especially in the early levels. I am surprised so many kids do learn to read under these circumstances and it is not surprising that so many do not. In the later levels they not are not looking at pictures to guess words but they preteach the story line and read as group so it is hard to catch the kids who are still guessing a lot. https://www.npr.org/2019/01/02/677722959/why-millions-of-kids-cant-read-and-what-better-teaching-can-do-about-it I have seen another article like this that is longer that I can try to find. It is good that you have backing by the admin to do what you want. I know how hard it is to change things up but you will be helping so many kids who are not being given the tools they need to learn to read become successful readers by using structured literacy.

Ack I hope not. I just recieved set 5 form Rainbow Resources but they are of stock because of the supplier in several levels now on RR and they are out of stock the Signapore math page too. It is still listed on the FAN math page. I hope they are not being discontinued but it looks like they might be. If I realized that I would have ordered set 6 when it was still available recently.

I liked their stuff. I would get it at the thrift store when it was available or for good sales and it always held up and they were comfortable and cute. My ds likes these pants I got there and I was going to see if grandma could pick some up for us but I guess I should do that.

Yea I do wonder if things will improve if he fixes the sleep issue. I have recently seen something about mouth guards that can be molded and it changes the jaw shape enough to prevent snoring. He used to have a mouth guard for tooth grinding and he stopped using it and ended up grinding down his teeth. I am not sure if it stopped his snoring too because this was before we were married and I think the ones designed to prevent snoring may be newer. I also saw from this social media thing on kids and mouth breathing that getting tonsils out can also prevent it in some people. He is a mouth breather at night too. Like others mentioned he also uses his computer in the middle of the night if he wakes up which wakes me up every time and I have to tell him to put it under the covers at least and he falls asleep shortly after hitting the pillow.

My 12 year old plays with much younger children in the neighborhood because there are no kids in her age range but she is not talking about drugs or using curse words used to demean a group of people. I think especially for the kids that are small for their age because they will hit puberty late that playing with younger kids is not concerning in itself. My dd takes on a mother hen type of role with younger kids and she tends to be at a similar peer or maturity level with kids a year or two younger or the kids her age who are also small for their age because they will be late developing. I would have an issue with what this kid is introducing but since you said his parents seem cool I would maybe bring it up with them and give them a chance to address it if you wanted to give him another chance.

He used to fall asleep with th tv a lot and end up in the living room all night but lately he has not. He actually did offer to sleep elsewhere but he has back issues from a car accident so I figure I can sleep elsewhere for now. I have bought up going for a sleep study or to look into why since it could be sleep apnea but he does not like going to doctors and did not want to. Right now we have high deductible insurance and lots of costs come up at once. A car is on the fritz, a bathroom is being repaired, and our boiler just went out plus other stuff. We just get by as it is. When I mentioned sleeping elsewhere he dd say maybe when other things get taken care of he will go in for it.

My spouse snores really loud and it causes me to barely sleep and constantly be sleep deprived. I keep trying to get him to do something like look into getting tonsils out, a mouth guard or the apnea machine etc but he will not hear it. Last year he traveled for work for a month and it was so nice to be able to sleep that month. Recently my kids had a sleep over in each other's room so I used the extra room to sleep and it was so nice. He falls asleep immediately and it takes me forever to fall asleep and poking him to change positions does not stop it. We do not have any extra bedrooms but I need to sleep separately. What is some sort of comfortable long term sleeping option that can be moved every day? We can't have a bed taking up space in another room.

I have that issue too and we are at about the same place in it right now. I usually have to follow the procedure of rereading the section the answer is in for so much of it with dd since she cannot answer it the first time. She is good at answering questions in other books we read. I was thinking of dropping it for that reason. She remembered and answered the questions about Greenland and Australia but most other topics she needs me to do the reread thing for a lot of them.

I think it is fine if you return something before it is used to make sure it fits or to see if it fits in with other decor in the home. I do not think it is ethical to buy something that will be used and then return it completely planned because you only were going to use it once or a few times and not because it did not fit.

For just tracking skills and not other vision issues I was given a sheet of activities I could work on but it did have directions and it was mostly stuff that was not only paper. I did similar activities to what you were given for my child who had other issues besides just tracking but it was in a certain sequence in which that part was not first and only a small part of what was done and they showed me how it was done first.

Dd has actually grown by leaps and bounds because of the I See Sam sets. It was hard to see at first because the books started out so low but the further along she gets in the sets (set 6 now) the better her reading gets and she learned enough patterns for it to transfer so it is much clearer now how she has improved. Her reading level is going up as it says it should and her fluency is growing too just as it should. The sets should get her to a mid 3rd grade to 4th grade level and then we will work on the bigger multisyllabic words. I just felt the sequence of Barton was a bad fit for her and it was. I shudder to think of where she would be if I tried sticking it out. Certain lessons were so hard for her and with the Barton sequence it would have taken years to read how she is in just a few months of the sets. The few things that give her trouble at times are the words that Barton taught as site words or as a unit. Barton stretched out lessons so each skill needed many days before we even got to the reading passage plus she needed the extra fluency work which made lessons take even longer. Some lessons were hard for her but then not seen much for a while and it just was not sticking. The one thing that was helpful about Barton the tapping one sound at a time and then blending I think I could have gotten elsewhere.The way words are trickled in and reviewed in the I See Sam sets is what she needed. I see the light at the end of the tunnel now and she is catching up. I wasn't even going to worry about writing or spelling this school year to focus on reading but she is doing so much better that I am going to start adding it in now.

I am thinking of using Dictation Day by Day with my 2nd grader because I think she would benefit from practicing spelling in the context of a sentence. I would probably work with her on segmenting the days words and then dictate the sentence to her. For now it will be writing and spelling and I also work on oral narrations. I would skip any bible verses mainly because the wording is akward using words like thy and change names like changing Dick into Nick. Is there anything similar that has spelling words in context of sentences that gradually get longer and more complex and will have new words in subsequent lessons that is more modern? At least it is free to try out. Does any one use Dictation Day by Day and like it? I was focusing more on getting her reading this school year but she is making good progress and I wanted to start a little bit of spelling and writing.

I would not use Ellen McHenry as a stand alone because it is not truly secular like I know she teaches classification in an outdated way.

I go on both type of hikes but I do stick to hikes that have obvious trails to follow whether they be narrow or wide or less traveled or somewhat popular.

Those Parker readers seem like they may work but I think it may hard to track down an actual copy. I do not like working from a screen or printing a lot out.

I am trying to decide what to use with my youngest in 2nd grade when she finishes with the Sam readers but will need more work on the bigger multisyllabic words. I have a copy of Webster's that I used successfully with my older kids but she has been tougher then them. I also considered Syllables Spell Sucess or ABeCeDarian levels C and D. What is REWARDs like? Is it easy to implement? Do you only use the intermediate level and not the secondary level? I think she will do best with lots of practice reading words in stories. Are there any good readers to practice with?

I still have no clue with this. I actually observed this exact behavior today with a young teen kid that seemed a social leader and he was saying very offensive cruel gossipy things about another kid that was not there and their chosen activity. The coach was there nearby in the room and had to have heard it because it was plenty loud but they do not get involved. The other kids were not really adding to it but not speaking up or disagreeing either. If someone spoke up they would get crap over it. The coach in other ways did not really seem to have the kids behavior under control. I really never understand how that type of behavior is what kids flock around and is so popular. Growing up I was one they gossiped about. I need to read some of the books mentioned in this thread.

This is the stage my youngest is in right now so this post is helpful to me too. I tried a lot and it took a lot of practice to get dd reading. What has really helped is the I See Sam readers mentioned above. We are now finishing set 5 out of 8. We do other phonics practice but that is what had her progress the most with fluency. She finally made a lot of progress recently and no longer only reads cvc but she still needs to work on bigger multisyllabic words. The first thing I will run through because it is nice and quick is Reading Pathways. They have multisyllabic pyramids. I know she will need more practice though so I might try either Websters or ElizabethB's lessons. I also might considering trying AbeCeDarian, REWARDS or Wise Owl Polysyllables. I am just going to finish the easier levels of ABeCeDarian and I see Sam first.

When I used it I just ended up using the questions in the textbook not the teachers guide and would use some of the workbook too but mostly because it made it easy to get samples. I only used it regularly half of one year the in spurts the second half. I decided I rather read whole books instead for literature so I switched to BYL the next year instead of getting the next level of MOSDOS.

I have one kid that did very well with Spalding and she took off quickly and decoded well above grade level and spells really well from it and two kids that just had more difficulty with both reading and spelling because it was too much at once. They did have the issue ElizabethB describes. They did it in a classroom that used it correctly. I do like the way Spalding does phonograms and describes things though so even though what I am using now calls the gh a silent gh I just say what does the phonogram igh say instead when things like that come up and I still use some of the sayings that Ellie described.

I am using Phonics Pathways but with a 8 year old who reading did not coming easy for and she is having similar issues. Some days she does really well and other days she has a harder time with the new lesson and makes mistakes at first. If she makes a mistake she tends to get stuck with it. In her case I do think she has dyslexia but she is better with phonemic awareness now and passes tests I give her on that but she might have a difficult time with certain hard blends. One thing I have been doing is just circling the pattern or area she gets wrong in pencil or the problem area to highlight it or a put a little mark near words she has a hard time with to go back to later. If she really struggles on a word I write it out bigger on another piece of paper and do that tap and say thing described in the ABeCeDarian link above. Once I finish with Phonics Pathways I will be doing something else (ABeCeDarian) and I also use The I See Sam Readers sets which are below what she is reading in PP and add things in slowly to help with fluency and give lots of practice. I am using the throw everything at her and see what sticks. Using PP is definitely helping her reading if I compare where she was before she started to now but she just needs more practice. I will be getting one if those notched cards soon because one if her biggest struggles now is tracking and I think it will help.

I would not rule it out just yet. I know some people think of IQ tests as set in stone but they were not originally intended that way. I think they are like anything else there can be growth and change and results can vary over time. Some people can hit brain spurts later then others. I think the more recent score would be closer then the lower score from when he was younger. I think with younger kids especially they just might not engage and put their best effort in. I would not use one test to assume what he will be capable of in the future. I know you do see some struggles besides that and those struggles may make it hard to do higher or make college hard but I do not think it is impossible. Time will tell but I think it is good that he is doing well academically with just some weaknesses.

Update this how it goes. I have a similar situation.

I like the term structured literacy because I do think there is more then one way for schools to reach more students and this is like an umbrella term that can encompass methods that do teach systematically. It sounds like something schools would adopt rather then Orton Gillingham or something like that. I hope more schools start using the approach rather then 'balanced literacy' approaches. I was watching some reading lessons the other day that made me cringe how they had the kids guess based on first letters and pictures and spent half the time discussing what will happen in the very simple book they were going to read. I can only imagine how bad it would be if my kid was taught like that.