My 7 yo son loves Fly Guy.

Thanks. I ordered the CD Rom and can't wait to try it.

He is Chinese and English bilingual but he does not really speak much Chinese now. So far I do not see issue of understanding concept of "where" in his Chinese. However, the wording and sentence sturcture in Chinese is completely different from English. Therefore, it's hard to compare.

My child is currently at first grade in public school. He is a bilingual child and starts receiving ESL from K as teacher found that he was lack of understanding of abstract vocabulary. It's hard for him to express his feeling clearly at that time. This year, his ESL teacher said that he probably will exit the program after first grade as his oral and listening English ability is almost like native speaker. He will need to catch up a little bit on reading and writing but they do not concern at this point as most of children at this age are still learning reading and writing. However, yesterday his social skill teacher (we use private practice and he does not have any diagnose) mentioned that she observed my son and found he often has difficulty to understand the WH questions when having conversation. Example: she asked him "what are you going to do on thanksgiving?" He said "happy thanksgiving". When a boy from the group asked him "where did you go on the weekend?" He answered "I went camping". For Yes-No questions, he has no problem. I tried it myself yesterday on the way home. I asked him "where did you go last weekend?" He was stuck and could not give me an answer. Then I narrowed down the question to "where did you go last Saturday?" Then he was able to give me the answer correctly. His social skills teacher concerns about this issue as it will impact his friendship development. Other children may feel frustrated when he does not answer their question correctly. Is there any book or DVD out there addressing this kind of issue? Or how I can help him on this? His social skills teacher wants me to address it with ESL teacher at school, but ESL teacher seems not concerned as she thinks his social English is already at the top level according per their assessment.

We use Reading Eggs and AAR2.

I plan to use IP and CWP for summer review before we start next level of textbook.

I have a 7.5yo first grader as well. He is in public school. They use everyday math and I supplement with SM at home. He takes both methods well. I grew up in Asian so that I am very comfortable to teach SM without HIG and I skipped lessons as well. I only use textbook and workbook at the beginning but found the practice is not enough especially word problems. My son is ok with math facts and computation but seems still weak at word problems. Therefore, I just ordered IP 1b and CWP 1. Hopefully those 2 books will be a good summer review before we move on 2A.

My son's school does 5 wall words per week and they also work with 1 specific word family of the week. Therfore, they are actually working with around 10-15 words per week. They will also review all the words introduced previously. They have spelling challenge every Friday and it include 12 words and 2 sentences. If any word not spelling correctly, teacher assigns additional practice sheet for practice on the weekend.

My son is finishing up first grade at public school, but a little bit slow on reading (still read at mid first grade level). We started AAR2 in April and currently are in lesson 20. In AAR2, when he knew the rule before I taught him, I went directly to fluency sheet. It will slow him down a bit. He is able to read but needs to take his time with words even those are words he knows all a long. I think he needs to build up visual recognition speed and fluency. Therefore, I alternate between AAR2 lessons and reading eggs to slow him down. Sometimes we will read books (frog and toad, little bear, mouse soup etc) from library instead of having lesson. If we finish AAR2 before AAR3 comes out, I am thinking to start him on AAS1 or AAS2 to bridge as I really like the way they structure the lessons. However, my son seems a natural speller. He has no trouble to pass spelling challenge at school every Friday. I am not sure if it's necessary to even afterschool with spelling program.

I went to school in Asia. We have to memorize all 9 time tables before we go to second grade. This is what I plan to do this summer for my incoming second grader. We will start 2A in summer as well.

I have a raising second grade as well. We did FLL on weekend starting April. We take it really slow as our main focus is on reading and writing for now. Most of our afterschooling time will take AAR on first priority, WWE as second and FLL as last so that we only do 1 lesson per week when we have time. So far I feel it's easy and light. My son enjoys the lesson as well.

I am currently using AAR2 to supplement my first grader's reading after school. We are at lesson 10 now. First half of workbook is cut and paste activities to practice rule learnt in respective lesson and second half is fluent sheet for additional practice. So far I did not see any writing part in AAR workbook.

SusanC, Thanks. We are in New Jersey and our school district is on the top. The average expectation by end of first grade is guided reading level I or J which is a big jump for my son as he started at level B. He now is level D on independednt reading and level E on instructional reading. He was level B last October, level C last November and finally jumped to level D in March after starting reading support at school. I will expect him to be on level F the most by the end of school and hopefully get to H by the end of summer. I am seeing progress slowly while we learn the new phonic rules. I think he needs more time to practice and get familiar with the new skills. Therefore, we read the same story from AAR2 reader on the next 2 days after we introduced new skill. The first time when he read the story, he needs reminder every time for the new skill. The second day when we read the story again, he can read it smoothly and only need to stop/sound out some words. They use Just right books at school for reading and bring home 2 (one is fiction and one is non-fiction) to read to parents every day. Should I use above level library books to read with him at home in order to push him up or should I stay with Just right book to practice more on the fluency?

Thanks both. I am kind of nervous as I do not have my primary education done in US (I came to US for graduate school) so I have no idea what the expected goal is for each grade level. When I heard from teacher that he needs reading support, I was kind of panic. My son was bad with sight words when he was younger so I gave up plugging him with sight words. He started to develop very little sight words naturally during second half of Kindergarten. I guess that is one of the reasons causing his slow progress on reading levels. From what I've learnt, I think now he is probably couple months behind the target progress on first grade reading so that I want to make sure that I am on the right track of helping him. From the information I found here, we decided using ARR2, WWE1 and FLL1 for afterschooling starting second week of April. And will continue in summer if we did not finish by the end of school year. Hopefully we can boost up his language art/reading/writing as a whole. We normally go through AAR2 and WWE1 4 lessons per week and 1 lesson for FLL. I love AAR2 and learning myself at the same time while teaching my son. I wished we had that when I was learning English We did not learn phonics back then and we need to memorize all words and grammers before we learn to read.

I am new here. My son is first grader in public school. We are bilingual family and English is my second language. My son was born is US and has been exposed to both languages when he was born. He started to received ESL when he was in Kindergarten. His spoken English is quite well, but he has some issue to understand words like what, when, why how and where questions so teacher decided to put him in ESL and ESL continues at first grade. He knows all the letter sounds at age 3 when I taught he alphabets. I thought that's phontics and he will pick up reading all by himeself in the future. We read simple books to him every night. When my son entered first grade last year, he was tested for reading level B. The teacher told me it was ok and he does not need additional reading help at this moment. His reading comprehension is above average per his teacher. After New year, teacher email me that now he is qualified for additional reading help because he was still on level C which is low at first grade. He was ok with CVC words and blending at that moment. Therefore, I started to search for additional help to improve his reading and found this informative forum. We signed him up for reading eggs after he started received additional reading support at school at the beginning of March. He is currently at map 10. Two weeks later, his reading level jumped up to D. Then I purchased AAR2 to afterschool him at night (I work full time). We just finished lesson 6 and he is ok with the lesson so far. We tried to read one story from frog and toad book last night and he was ok to read most of it without help. What else I can do to help him? I hope we can catch up to second grade level by the end of summer so that he won't continue struggle in reading in the future.