We had the appointment today. Developmental pediatrician gave us dx of minor ADD (mainly inattentive). She recommended behavior therapist to get the coping skills for focus issue. She also did basic academic screening and did not find any learning disability. His math is above grade level, reading above 2nd grade level (while school assessed him 6 month behind) and spelling is at high 2nd grade level (he just finished 2nd grade). The result is very similar with DORA test we administrated early last month but slight off from what school assessed him especially on reading. Doctor mentioned that we can request 504 to accommodate him for testing time and assignment time if he continues having trouble with that in 3rd grade. Next step, child study team will monitor him for next school year and we should be contacted for meeting by end of Sep to see if full evaluation is required.

While my son was in 1st, he enjoyed brainpop jr from school. When my son was in 2nd, he asked for brainpop as he basically watched everything in brainpop jr. I think brainpop is a little to deep for him at that time, but DH thinks we should go for deeper materials so that he can learn more and use it for longer time. Therefore, we subscribed brainpop instead of jr. He likes it and basically swallows everything even he does not fully comprehend the contents.

Quick update. DH does not want me to go too far as we both work and schedule will be tight during weekday evening. Therefore, we decided to stay with current music center and trail other violin teacher. There are 6 violin teachers we can choose from. First chose is Russian female teacher but she was fully booked. We ended up with an Ukraine male teacher who is using Suzuki books but teaching in traditional way. He is firm but not scary. DS who is suspect with ADD was extremely focus in the trail class. The teacher managed the lesson very well and was able to pinpoint his issue. The teacher wants him to back off to basic scale practice with his new bow hold and wrist position which is also something i really see he needs to work on. He explained everything to DS (not me, finally!) very detail and make sure he understands what he needs to do at home. The way this teacher talks is calm but firm. That's the teaching style DS needs to get progress. It is very different experience from previous teacher. He is very loose and wants his students to be happy with violin. Some students can work with this style and progress well but not DS. He felt happy and easy with previous teacher but not progress well as well as not getting proper training with his basic techniques such as bow hold and wrist position. With new teacher, he thinks he is cool and matching his learning style. For me, I think new teacher is great. He explains basic techniques very well. I finally learn where he should put his thumb and fingers without looking up online when we practice at home.

I bought REWARDS Intermediate but have not yet used it to my 8yo. He is currently reading at mid 2nd grade level (he enjoys new colorful Ricky Ricotta's mighty robot book this summer after he got it from Barns and Noble summer reading program.). We stopped at the middle of Dancing Bear C before summer. He is quite solid at one or two syllables words and he is very good at sight words. He knows some syllabus division rules but not using it without reminder so he will guess the multisyllabic words most of time. DB does introduce some prefix and suffix but not covering too much for multi-syllabus words. I am planing to wait till he is more automatic with the syllabus division and then we can start REWARDS intermediate.

My son's reading tutor charges $60/hr. His violin teacher charges $45/per 30 minutes. His 1st grade teacher charges $90/per 45 minutes for summer tutoring. It was a sticker shock for me and I never used her. Luckily we found current tutor who has good reputation and better qualification (OG certified and reading specialist for 20 years). I think her rate ($60) is pretty resonable for my area (NJ).

Thanks all the comments. I do not know any instrument but have been in chior all my life so I know some music. DS begged for violin since he was 4 but I delay the lesson till he was 6 as I knew that he cannot handle the length of individual lesson. Since DS started violin class, I have been sitting in the room with them and help on his practice at home. Few times that teacher has to teach me first and then I spend time to teach DS at home. DS loves violin but he could be unfocus in lesson. The Suzuki teacher who teaches at her house is the recommandation from a friend. Friend's daughter (middle school age) is taking private lesson with the husband but she mentioned her teacher is very strict (will yell at student if not progress well) so she recommanded me to try the wife who is teaching Suzuki method and more patient as a mom. She was trained traditionally and got the Suzuki certification later so she will be able to work with both methods. I just contact her and she wants to see him first before talking more about the lesson/fee/progress. I have two Russian teachers from recommandation and both are with music center. The comments from the recommandators about their Russian teachers are "more pushy" and "strict". But I see their children are doing great with violin. DS has great passion about violin but does not want to spend much time to practice. We argued all the time at the beginning and finally we found the balance point.

I would like to ask pro and con between these two teaching methods. DS is 8 and currently working at Suzuki Violin book 2. His progress is very slow and his teacher is not very organized. He loosely follows Suzuki but focus more on bringing up child's interest first so DS does not have good bow hold and he cannot read music either. I have friend's daugter learns violin with Russian teacher almost at the same time as DS but her progress is much faster than us. I think it's ok to take it slow and build the interest first for beginner so I did not think of switching teacher. Now the teacher cannot continue teaching next semester and I think it's time to make a change. I found two Suzuki certified teachers and one Russian teacher (friend's daughter's teacher) nearby. One Suzuki teacher and Russian teacher both work with music center and the other Suzuki teacher teaches at her house. I am debating between Suzuki or switching to Russian teacher. Few friends warn me that DS may have trouble to switch to traditional teaching method as he is used to Suzuki.

How about math in focus? MIF is CC compliace. It's coloful and more detail steps in the textbooks. I am thinking to switch from PM to MIF in third grade but still use IP and CWP to practice.

He is Chinese and English biligual. He now speaks English most of time but understands Chinese when grandma speaks. In Chinese, there is no syllable, past tense, and plural rules. English is his dominant language for sure. I can see he is using English to learn his Chinese now. He knows how to divide the syllables but does not use the skills when he sees the longer word. The same situation happened on his general reading last year. He knew all the sounds but didn't use it when he read. When he was 1st grade, there were even some words that he can spelled but cannot recognize when reading. After many practices, finally he starts to sound out unknown words but still has guessing habit sometimes.

Thank you, Elizabeth. I just started let him watch your online lesson. He does not like it but I think it will help on top of OG tutoring once a week. He needs work on syllable division rules. He will be in half day academic camp for next two weeks and grandma will watch him for the afternoon. The camp will be led by certified teacher but they have their owner workbook and curriculum. They won't be able to work with him for extra stuffs. Grandma does not know English too much so she won't be able to monitor his progress either. He will have to wait till I get home at 6pm to start the work but 20 minutes a day is definitely doable.

SKL, I feel you! Next week will be our last week of school but I think they are very loose starting this week already. We are heading to Universal Studio and Disney on his last day of school next week.

The kid can surprise you sometimes. I remembered my son had hard time to use assigned high frequency word to come up with story with minimium 7 sentences and begin/middle/ending structure. He needed me holding hand for that particular homework for about a month（they had that homework once a week to go with wall words during 2nd half of 2nd grade）. It normally took us an hour to do it. However, in the last two weeks, he started to complete this type of homework in aftercare by himself. I only need to help him revise a little bit or fix the grammer when we get home. I guess he started to feel comfortable about that.

We have so many things in our head that we want to accomplish during summer but we do not have enough time. The first week of summer, we will go down FL to have some fun. The last two weeks of summer, we will travel overseas back to my home town. Therefore, we only have about 7 weeks to do some summer works. For academics, our teacher suggested reading, journaling and keep practicing math facts. Currently DS started the summer reading log from Barns and Noble book store last week and already half way completed (4 books read). Math: Math Mammoth G2 review books (2 pages a day, 5 days) Dreambox (whenever he feels like it) Kumon Addition/Subtraction (or timed math worksheet) Memorize time table 2, 3, 5 Reading: Dancing Bear C (already half way through it now, 10 minutes per day) OG tutoring once a week (1hr) Reading Assistant twice a week (20 minutes each) B&N summer reading program/Library summer reading program Writing: Evan Moore Write a super Sentence & Paragraph Writing Vacation Journaling (while we travel) Project Read writing program with tutor once a week (1hr) Story book project (a friend is propsoing this project and is willing to help each kid publish her/his own story book by the end) Chinese: review Chinese phonics review 120 Chinese characters learnt this school year immersion environment at home (grandma will stay with us for three weeks) trip to Asia for two weeks

Yes, I completely agree. I do hear some of my friends in CA saying that their children are forced to get in ESL even their English is fluent. The school makes it mandatory for children whose parents are not native English speaker to go through ESL screening test. We do not have this situation in NJ. My son's ESL in K was push-in. The ESL teacher got in his class and help him and the other boy for the classwork. Do you know what kind of work/curriculum they do in your girl's pullout?

Our principle office called, they cannot do the evaluation now. I don't know why. DH was the one who got the call and he didn't ask. Most of the info he got is the same as what we heard from his teacher. Inclusion class, reading support, writing support and child study team monitoring. They said the child study team has to observe his performace in new classroom for few weeks before they can decide if full evaluation is needed. Anyway, I finally got our own appointment from Children Specialized Hospital in August so before school child study team starts monitoring, I will have some information on hand already. Also I chatted with a neighborhood friend who pulled her kids out to private school from top district. She highly recommands me pulling my son out to private as well. She thinks public school picks on kids like our children in order to keep funding for special services. I really doubt it. At least, in our school, my son is receiving quality curriculum in pullout and he did learn from it. I just use the 40L reading grade level test from ElizabethB`s tutoring page. My son scored at 4.1 grade level. He scored at 3rd grade level for AeBeCeDarian placement test as well. Our tutor uses DRA to assess him and he is around late 2nd or early 3rd grade level which is on level for his age. However, our school only identified him reading at early 2nd grade level because he is careless and districted while doing assessment at school setting. There must be some gaps. Hopefully we can find it out from our appointment or from school child study team.

Owl at home is guide reading level J which is beginning of second grade reading level. My son read it last year during summer with help while school assessed him at level E. Now the independent reading level school assigned him is about J as well but he found too easy and boring. However, when he is doing guided reading with tutor, he can read the nonfiction book with level O and is able to comprehend.

I have a second grader that is reading behind as well. Beginning of second grade, he was assigned to read mid first grade level books which he found boring. Now he is assigned to read early second grade books in school but is actually reading early chapter books at home without help and third grade nonfiction books with guidance. He is careless (attention) so he does not test well for his true reading level at school. We first tried AAR2, he did the lesson well, but not transferring to actual reading. When it came to reader, it was so painful. We decided to drop and switched to Dancing Bear. Dont get me wrong, AAR is a good program and I learn a lot from it myself because I never learnt those phonics and syllable rules before. However, it did not solve DS reading problem so we have to move on. Dancing Bear gets thing going. Then I paired it with I SEE SAM for fluency. We`ve done up to ARI3 set and then DS lost interest because he did not like fairy tale type of story. Same time while we are doing remediation at home, school pulls him out for reading support daily and they use Wilson Reading Foundation which is awesome to both of his reading and spelling. However, Wilson is pricy and not as easy to implement at home by yourself. I will recommand you take a look at Dancing Bear and I SEE SAM as well as AeBeCeDarian besides AAR to see which one will fit your child better.

I will definitely take out eggs from breakfast tomorrow. Maybe I should give him tofu instead and add calcium supplment.

I just got email from teacher stating my son had several outburst these two days. It has rarely happened after 1st grade. Even last week when we met with teacher, she said he was holding up very well. I thought it was only maturity issue when he was in K. Now I am thinking what we change these two days and adding omelete in his breakfast is the only difference this week. I started to add one egg with two slices of turkey breast and some corn for his breakfast starting Monday. I thought high potien should help him focus. His teacher mentioned his emotional outburts happened mostly in the whole morning. Coincident? or something to concern? What he ate today: omelete (egg, turkey breast, celery) mini blueberry pancakes 4oz 1% organic milk two EPA fish oil What he ate yesterday: omelete (egg, turkey breast, celery) 2 mini crossants 1/4 apples 1/4 orange two EPA fish oil

Thanks for great advice. I will make a note and consult doctor when we go for appoitment, I will find some time to try circle e method. Normally he is pretty good at word search or hidden picture activities. In regard of early intervetion, the school is offerring reading support (30 mins/ 5x per week/Wilson Reading) and writing instruction review (30 mins/2x per week/small group tutoring). I am also doing dancing bear with him at home and will do reading assistant for fluency once dancing bear is done. We also have OG tutor comes to us once a week and will increase to twice in summer. His reading issue is mainly at applying the rules in actual reading, but not phonemic awareness. He needs overteaching to make it automatic. His social skill therapist also suggests language evaluation as she feels that he is slower on the expressive language. He needs longer time to retrieve the idea/words/language that he knows. We are not sure if it's masking by his bilingual background.

I am finally able to get an appointment in August to see developmental pediatrician from Children Specialized Hospital. They have all other specialized doctors there (pediatric neuroloist, speech language pathologist, neuropyschologist) so they can perform additional evaluation if needed. I was wrongly requesting pyschological evaulation at first which will take 6 months or longer to get the appointment.

Thanks. I just email principle and ask for her advice.

Alessandra I am not sure if I still need to write the letter to request. As last meeting with his 2nd grade teacher, she informed us that school pyschologist has been monitoring him few time in class during school year and they agreed that he will be the case that they want to follow up next school year as 3rd grade will be more demanding on the schoolworks (state exam etc). Also the meeting with child study team is scheduled in late September already. They will be busy to settle existing SN students for the new school year at the beginning of month so won't be able to get to us till late September. The teacher said that we will receive a detail letter from school some time in September. I can see the chance he can get IEP or SE is rare because he fits in regular class well. He behaves and not too much distruptive. His math is on track. Social skills are great. Reading and writing are around 6 months behind. He mainly just needs redirection and reminders to stay focus for language related works. I worked with him last summer for his writing in my own way (loosely follow daily 6 traits) and I was able to bring him up to close grade level before 2rd grade started. School is proactively assigned him to inclusion class for next year where he can get extra attention from additional teacher in class in addition to reading support 5 days a week and writing review twice a week.

Alessandra Thanks. He is qualified for summer school offered by district. However, we both work full time so the summer school hours are not feasible for us (3 hours a day and 4 days a week for July). He will go to a camp with half day academic review (English, Math, Reading) and half day fun activities for 7 weeks. They do hire NJ certificate teacher to work with them in the small group (1 to 6 ratio). They will review the passed year (preassessment on first day of camp) and then preview some for the next school year. My son had great time in that camp last year and he has asked to go back. I have asked his reading tutor to increase to two sessions in summer. She will do OG in one day and Project Read for writing on another day of the week. She said that they will be able to get to work on paragraph before he starts 3rd grade. For the rest of time, I will do AeBeCeDarian short B workbook for reineforcement and C for multi syllable words decoding. He is doing well on math so I will only ask him work on math mammoth 2nd grade review book and dreambox in summer. And I need to keep up his Mandarin during summer as well. :) I am currently seeking private neurodevelopmental pediatric evaulation through our insurance to get more clear picture if any medical condition is involved. It's a long wait to get one from local hospital so I may need to go out of network first. Like you said, it will be complicated to tell with our ELL background. His teacher said that there is a regulation that school needs to provide me the result within 6 weeks after they start evaluation. We will be called for meeting at the end of Sep before they start and should be notified the result and plan by end of year. Our school is more proactive than I thought. My friend who is living in another distrct in NJ was not able to get 504 for his ADHD-hyperactive/Implusive son. The principle claims 504 is for student who has C and below in grade and her son is on track for all his subjects. They can only offer behavoral intervention plan for him.

Pump it up for you. I am also thinking about summer. My son's school is using Wilson and he is making slow progress with it so I am not going to drop OG. We will continue twice a week OG tutoring during summer and I need to find another program to work with him once we finish Dancing Bear C. I am thinking about REWARD intermediate for multi-syllable word attack or Seeing Stars you mentioned above. Not sure if Seeing Stars is doable at home. If so, you can choose to do Seeing Stars by yourself and have OG tutor does two sessions a week.