ReadingMama1214
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Posts posted by ReadingMama1214
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Yes. DD is required to read aloud to me once a day. It's not something I have to force though. She'll also read aloud to her little brother throughout the day. But now that it's summer she has to read aloud before getting screen time.
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Oh goodness, I didn't mean to be critical of library programs! I love libraries, it's just the expectations that bother me.
Let my try to explain my thinking.
I saw the minimalist reading program and thought to myself, is this "normal?" Are preschoolers really only expected to hear one book every three days? As an avid reader, that horrified me. I thought, no, they're just trying to encourage reading in addition to the other billion summer activities that kids are involved in.
Then I started second guessing myself. Last year, I pulled Dd out of a private, well respected preschool (with the price tag to show it!) because they did not allow books in the three-year-old class, citing regulations requiring everything to be sanitized.
If preschools don't allow books in the classroom, and libraries expect so little summer reading... then what is our world coming to?!
Ok, I'm going to go hide in my little world and go read Dd more stories.
Except I really shouldn't. I don't want Dd to live in THAT world. But changing the world... Oh! It would be so much easier if you guys tell me I'm fretting for nothing and kids really do read.
That sounds like a horrible school. I've never heard of such a policy any where. I know at my work (a transitional housing program) they require everything to be heat santized, but it's a homeless shelter and there's bed bug issues. A preschool? Insane. I can assure you that's not normal.
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We went to the library a week or so ago to get our daughter's first chapter books to try out on her own (well really we take turns reading a page each at night as she's still intimidated by so many words on one page compared to picture books). While we were there, my wife went to check out their summer reading program. The librarian asked what grade our daughter is in. My wife said we home school and aren't really sure about a grade, but she's an excellent reader (our daughter was sitting at a table reading me a book in sight of the librarian at this point). She then asked how old our daughter is (4) and said they had to go by age.
Their summer reading program for 4-5 year olds included no actual reading. It was basically what you described. Singing songs, talking about colors, numbers, the alphabet etc. I'm sure it would have been a good program for kids that needed it, but we were looking for something that would challenge our daughter to try new things or have something to work toward.
I'm sure it's a great set of activities for motivating kids/families that might not be doing those things already / have mastered them, but it was silly for our situation.
I would go back with a different librarian and ask to go by grade. Just say she's in K. That's what we did last year for our daughter who was reading in prek. It's worth a shot. Check out independent bookstores. They often have better programs.
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Literacy activities encompass more than just reading. Singing a song has to do with phonemic awareness skills such as rhyming; imaginative play can cover vocabulary, narrating a story (beginning, middle, end), and making predictions in a story; playing with play dough helps build the muscles for writing; talking (and listening) helps build listening skills and vocabulary (read about the 3 million word gap).
All of these are literacy - pre-reading skills. These suggestions are important, yet simple, and many people wouldn't consider them literacy activities until they see it written down. (And even then don't understand what they have to do with literacy.) I think it reflects more on our society in general, rather than the public schools in particular.
Exactly! Literacy skills encompass so much more than just picking up a book.
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My family have always been voracious readers, and we've always participated in library reading programs. I see it as a harmless community-based affirmation of the thing we happen to be into, and though yes the amount you're supposed to read is far below what we do routinely, I can't imagine getting worked up about it. Nor is our relationship to reading so fragile that it would be ruined by nice librarian ladies offering those much-maligned external rewards. When I was a kid we had a grand old time with it when the reward was simple pride/acknowledgement, or I guess a bookmark, and where we are now the reward is the kid's choice from a selection of nice books. Children's librarians absolutely love strong reading families, and being too good for that relationship is a stance that's hard for me to understand.
Also, we've gone several generations of voracious independent reading from kindergarten through old age without the practice of reading little ones every possible picture book available. It's nice if you've got the time and it's what you're into, but I doubt the necessity of constantly exposing to preschoolers to innumerable new titles, as opposed to dwelling meaningfully in the favorites. Counting only new titles, as I think you're supposed to for library reading programs, one every three days is actually fairly ambitious. Even a thousand books before kindergarten (who has time to keep score???) is about one every two days.
I would not say the public schools have low expectations. Yes, there are loads of problems with the public schools, but it's not as simple as that. A lot of people on here have actually struggled with the fact that at this point in history, the writing expectations in elementary tend to be too high, to the point of developmental inappropriateness. In other areas, such as math and reading, the expectations are generally sound. Expectations for free reading at home vary from they don't bother to say anything about it up to "20 minutes a night." But really, even if one has a kid like mine who reads two to three hours a night, I don't think it would be desireable to have "read two hours a night" be a school requirement.
This exactly. We LOVE books and we also love our summer reading programs. To me they are a fun part of the summer routine.
Our library does have literacy activities on their summer reading for 0-5 year olds. They're activities to build pre-reading skills such as rhyming and phonemic awareness. Nursery rhymes and singing songs can be great ways to do this. They all center around literacy though and much more goes into literacy than reading words.
I also agree that these programs are targeted at those populations that need to be encouraged to read throughout the summer.
Our local book stores also offer excellent programs that are geared more towards K+. They have bingo cards that encourage kids to read a wide variety of books. Our bingo cards (from two bookstores) have squares that say "read a book about someone who looks different than you" "read a book about a differently abled person" "read a fantasy book" "read a biography" etc. it really makes kids read broadly over the summer.
My kids read all of the time and the incentives in the summer are just for fun and to connect with our community.
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I know that I have seen links to articles before about the disadvantages and advantages to childhood IQ testing. I'm doing a research paper on the downsides of IQ testing in children but I am having a hard time finding scholarly articles. Any suggestions or sources?
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Her school may have taught the Bob book type words as sight words. Many schools teach words that are possible to sound out phonetically as sight words. So they'll teach "yes" "run" etc. as sight words even though they're phonetic.
This sounds like what her school did. Taught phonetic words as sight words.
We used The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading for preschool and it really gave my daughter a solid grasp on phonics. She's now reading at a 2nd grade level fluently. I would get a copy of that book or a similar one and work through it. Your daughter would benefit greatly from a solid phonics foundation.
For an alternative to Bob books check out Nora Gaydos Now I'm Reading books and Usborne Phonics books. Much more color and cute stories
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Also, I am not crazy about TGTB spelling. In level 1 it is a list of random high. frequency seeming words. There is spelling through dictation in the levels though. We are skipping the spelling lists
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My Mac printed it fine, I did some in color but then others in B&W. I then didn't print the art pages and plan to pull those up on my computer.
When DD (5.5) did the placement test 2 months ago, it didn't have the grammar and spelling. They just added those in the last few weeks. DD placed into level 1 and barely missed level 2 on the old assessments. On the new assessment she would be in K. K would be way too boring for a reading kiddo IMO. The spelling and grammar in the assessment for Level 1 seem a bit out of place and the spelling words are taught within the Level 1 itself. So it somewhat baffled me when I saw the new assessment.
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We're sending our oldest to public kindergarten in an immersion program next year. I speak several foreign languages poorly, as does my husband, and we would like our children to surpass is in this, off at all possible. I hang out here on a homeschooling board because public school didn't work out for my husband or his younger brothers, and I want to be ready at any moment to start homeschooling if the public option is clearly not working.
Part of me would love to keep dd home, but she's so excited to go, and sending her will let me give her middle child little brother some good attention.
We are using ps for the same reason. Our daughter will attend an immersion school starting in K this coming fall.
We do academics at home as well though and she craves them so I hang out on homeschooling boards for tips and resources. We'll continue to do some afterschooling as well.
I can't provide my daughter an immersion language experience and we truly desire them to be bilingual.
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What I found with my DS is after the break he came back more confident. I had books out that he could decide and read on his own if he wants during the break. He ended up reading those a lot to himself and became very fluent in his reading and beyond where we had left off. This has happened twice with two different kids. And then they were ready to go again after a few weeks and fluency was much better from there on.
This is what I found as well. My dd always made gains after a break
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I've used it this year as my primary curricula for math and reading for my K/1st grader. She has thrived with it. This kiddo kind of stalled on learning to read with the program I'd used with her older sibs, and switching to Reading Eggs gave her some nice independence (although I usually sit with her) and got her over the hump.
There's a lot in the program if you take time to investigate. There's The Library (kind of like an online Book Adventure, in that the books are digital but there are quizzes at the end), Storylands, etc. We are just getting ready to move up to Eggspress so I don't know if the Spelling feature is there, but we've used it for weekly spelling this year too. And then printing out the worksheets for both reading and math.
Will it automatically place them in reading eggspress if they do well on the assessment? DD got only one wrong (by mistakenly clicking the wrong answer) and it still only placed her at lesson 112. I don't mind the review, I'm just wondering if I have to move her up to eggspress on my own.
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We used it for a couple of years with oldest DD. She enjoyed it, and it was during the time when I was desperate for ANYTHING to get her reading. It was worth it to me.
Did she use it after she was reading? DD is reading at a second grade level and I think she'd place in reading Eggspress
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We are using the free trial of both right now and I'm wondering if it's worth the cost. I have a 3 year old (not reading, knows numbers and letter sounds) and a 5 year old (reading well). They seem to enjoy the trial and learn and it's $60 for both on homeschoolbuyerscoop
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DD (5) only slightly advanced
•Finish Ordinary Parents Guide to Reading. She has 80 lessons to go and has surpassed the book in her own reading (reading multisyllable and r-controlled vowel words which we haven't covered yet formally)
•Start AAS1
•swim independently. She's got the mechanics down but is terrified to let the teacher let go of her.
We also need to potty train DS who is turning 3. He is physically ready but mentally blocked. Says he's scared to pee without a diaper. He's had some success and has excellent bladder control.
We also started AAR-Pre level with DS. Going slowly and at his pace.
DD finished OPGTR in March. She was determined to do multiple lessons a day for a while.
We ended up holding off on AAS until I get a better idea of her spelling abilities. She seems somewhat of a natural speller and I'm not sure I want to invest in a program quite yet.
DD is starting to swim on her own. We switched instructors and the new guy is amazing. She can swim short distances underwater. They teach underwater first. Well continue swim in the summer.
She's expressed interest in her bike again. She's been afraid of it for a while and now says she wants to learn to ride it. Our goal for the summer is to get her riding.
She "graduates" preschool tomorrow and can't stop talking about how much she'll miss school and how she doesn't want to go to K next year. We will work on getting her ready for that transition this summer as well.
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We are also now using The Good and the Beautiful Level 1. The phonics is all review but the grammar is excellent.
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Do you think OPGTR is a good phonics curriculum, or is something like Logic of English Foundations necessary? I really want something simple and easy to get done everyday. I am also considering The Good and the Beautiful level K.
We used and loved OPGTR. I used it after my daughter new her letter sounds and started on lesson 27. We started at 4 and she finished right before turning 5.5. So about 18 months. She is decoding multisyllable words well now and reading early chapter books. It really gave her a solid phonics foundation and she loved it. We did supplement with some games I found to print offline and with BOB books, Noray gaydos now I'm reading, and some other phonics readers. It was an excellent program and more than enough for us.
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I haven't used the rhymes. We started on lesson 27 though since dd knew her letter sounds from leapfrog and other resources. But I wouldn't do the rhymes. I don't care for them.
Now my DS would probably love them. He loves rhymes.
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Update: So......today she was reading to me from the I Can Read It book and read a few entire sentences without having to chop up the words!!! Little stinker, it's like she was waiting for me to worry before having a developmental leap!
I may still use something other than AAR 2 just cause I'm not sure I want to spend the $$$ on it...and I HAVE Seton Phonics 2, which she seems to like fine, and OPGTR, so between those I'm probably good, right? Or Dancing Bears is only $28.
That's great! It's crazy how quickly they can make a leap. I think you'll be fine with what you have on hand. We used only OPGTR. I did find some free printables on teacherspayteachers.com and Pinterest that I would use occasionally to add some fun, but other than that we just opened the book and did our lesson. It goes to a 4th grade decoding ability so I think you'd be fine with just using your resources on hand.
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Thinking maybe I'll make some flash cards of the two letter blends that OPGTR uses, and see if that helps her.
I definitely would. I made flash cards for every blend and phonogram and it helps I believe
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Ok - update. I did a lesson of OPGTR today with her, on three letter blends. And she did great. And I'm realizing that OPGTR does that, it teaches a lot of things as blends, to learn as one sound, versus AAR where each is a separate sound. It's so much faster to recognize STR as one sound, than to sound out each one separately. And OPGTR does that with a lot of two letter blends that she sees as separate things. I'm thinking I should go back and teach those blends, to help her with fluency. And OPGTR is much easier to move around with, and will give her more confidence more quickly, I think.
And we'll keep doing the I Can Read It books.
Oh, and she told me she didn't think reading could ever be fun, so we had a long talk about how much I love reading, to the point that my punishment as a kid was to be grounded from reading, lol. And about all the things she'll be able to read, etc. And...that means now I have to see if there are Hello Kitty books, as that was the only thing she could imagine wanting to read, lol.
How a child of mine could EVER not want to read, I have no idea. Hell, I DEVOUR books!
I bet she will love books once fluency is there. My daughter was the same and she would say "I don't like reading", but once she leaped in fluency she suddenly loved it. She was asking to do 2 lessons a day in OPGTR when we got closer to the end. We now do Wise Owl Polysyllables for practice and I think the similar style to OPGTR appeals to her. I also liked the pace of OPGTR. I felt like it got her reading, but also reinforced concepts. I do find that my DD has a solid grasp on blends. Even when looking at the alphabet written out she will recognize blends that she sees such as "st" Our fluency really increased around lesson 130-150. It took a while, but she did get there and it almost seemed overnight.
There are Hello Kitty books. We had some that my dd got in a set from Costco. I got rid of them because i felt like they were just taking up shelf space, but there is definitely a time and a place for character books. If they get her reading I would get any I could find from the library!
Also, my DD loves this game. I edited the PDF to add whatever concept we were covering in OPGTR. It really helped with fluency. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Pop-a-long-vowel-silent-e-nonsense-word-game-502457
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I would continue on with the I Can Read books and teaching some sight words phonetically. We switched to Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading after starting with AAR. I wanted something that I could move through at our own pace without spending a ton of money. It took a while for my DD to be able to read an actual library book. But I felt like it was a lot of building of fluency and once she had a breakthrough she suddenly was a lot less frustrated and started reading for pleasure. Once she gained fluency she also started saying she could read. But I feel like she needed the time to grow as a reader. We took several breaks throughout phonics instruction and I felt that after a week or two off she would suddenly improve.
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I would not read Austen in 3rd grade. So much of the nuances of the language and the cultural context of the stories will be missed at that age. There's also some issues such as marital affairs that I would want to wait on.
Does Barnes and Noble Abridge Austen?
I loved the Abridged and then the regular Dickens at that age. I believe I did Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol both abridged and regular around that age.
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I am definitely doing AAS. But I wonder if we need to still work on decoding skills with phonics and reading. I feel like we could still use some review. I don't know if we need to invest in AAR though. Would some review in OPGTR be a good idea? Maybe some reading practice in McGuffey to complement AAS phonics rules?
We love OPGTR. We only did the pre level of AAR but my daughter seemed to move quickly and I couldn't justify the cost of AAR so we did OPGTR. It worked extremely well. We finished it and now do a page of Don Potters Wise Ow Polysyllables each day to reinforce reading skills.
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Finding an article. Help
in K-8 Curriculum Board
Posted
A friend and I were discussing sight reading and adults. I remembered an article posted here that discussed the science behind adult reading. The article talked about how adults actually appear to decide quickly, rather than reading by sight. Does anyone have a link to the article? I can't seem to find it on google.