How far should 1st grader be in OPGTR?

[SueS]

My 6 yo daughter is in 1st grade. I started Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading in Kindergarten with her. We are at lesson and it is going slowly. She is still sounding out most words. She doesn't seem to get the silent e at the end makes the vowel say its name. I have to remind her with each word. She confuses b and d most of the time still. Should I be concerned? I have 6 kids. Her 10 yo sister is not a great reader. Two of her older brothers read really well. I'm wondering if my 6yo is on track or if she should be reading more easily. This is the first child that is using OPGTR.

[skueppers]

Bumping this up for you.

 

For what it's worth, my daughter reads quite well, but she still confuses b and d.

 

Edited to add: my daughter was somewhere in the 110-120 range when her reading really took off. We discontinued the OPG after lesson 119 because she hated it, and I was unconvinced the potential benefit was worth the unhappiness in her particular case.

Edited September 22, 2010 by skueppers
Added more information.

[Sahamamama]

My 6 yo daughter is in 1st grade. I started Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading in Kindergarten with her. We are at lesson and it is going slowly. She is still sounding out most words. She doesn't seem to get the silent e at the end makes the vowel say its name. I have to remind her with each word. She confuses b and d most of the time still. Should I be concerned? I have 6 kids. Her 10 yo sister is not a great reader. Two of her older brothers read really well. I'm wondering if my 6yo is on track or if she should be reading more easily. This is the first child that is using OPGTR.

 

What lesson? :bigear:

 

I think that so much of the answer to your question is "It depends." ;) Does your daughter feel defeated by reading lessons? Or is she eager and ready to learn? When my oldest daughter made the transition from consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words to CVC-E words (from pan to pane, from mad to made), there was a period of adjustment. I would just gently say "The silent e on the end of the word makes the first vowel say its name," and she would remember the rule and sound out the words.

 

Confusion of b and d is fixable, but I'm not sure how to do it. Maybe OhElizabeth would have some suggestions for you, I think she has tutored students through this. Here's one thread that I found doing a search on "b and d confusion" --

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=208381&highlight=confusion

 

FWIW, my oldest started OPG when she was three years old. By the time she was four she was through the letter sounds, CVC, ending blends, beginning blends, digraphs, and adding s (up to Lesson 65). She started long vowels on her fourth birthday, and a few lessons later -- her reading took off like a rocket ship. She is now 5.75 and reads Little House, Curious George, Church Mouse, and non-fiction books all. day. long. My Little Bookworm. :D I tell you this to encourage you that OPG can work, if you do it consistently (4-5x/week), briefly (10-15 minutes/day), and patiently. It's all I used for my oldest, I'm using it with my twins (Lesson 46 today!), and to that we add a lot of read aloud.

 

If your older boys are strong readers, perhaps you could have one of them read aloud to your 6 year old every day? Or have one of them teach her to read? HTH.

[SueS]

Yikes! I meant to get up and get the book to see what lesson she is on. It's 72. We used it last year and we moved this summer and the book was in transit so we didn't do it for a few months. I backed up and retaught a bunch of lessons. I'm getting concerned because she reads almost each word letter by letter with me holding my finger over the letters and revealing one at a time. And, her older sister has struggled.

[FairProspects]

What lesson? :bigear:

FWIW, my oldest started OPG when she was three years old. By the time she was four she was through the letter sounds, CVC, ending blends, beginning blends, digraphs, and adding s (up to Lesson 65). She started long vowels on her fourth birthday, and a few lessons later -- her reading took off like a rocket ship. She is now 5.75 and reads Little House, Curious George, Church Mouse, and non-fiction books all. day. long. My Little Bookworm. :D I tell you this to encourage you that OPG can work, if you do it consistently (4-5x/week), briefly (10-15 minutes/day), and patiently. It's all I used for my oldest, I'm using it with my twins (Lesson 46 today!), and to that we add a lot of read aloud.

 

If your older boys are strong readers, perhaps you could have one of them read aloud to your 6 year old every day? Or have one of them teach her to read? HTH.

 

Yes, but you may just have a natural reader that would have done well with any program. :) We have been working very consistently for about 15 months now on OPGTR, and cannot get past the long vowel section. It is just too many rules for ds and will not click. I think it is developmental and normal for there to be fits and starts in learning to read. It just takes more review for some kids but I definitely think our 6 y.o. are within the range of normal!

[Mallory]

I really don't think there is any answer to this, so far my two readers have been at the opposite ends of readers- the oldest could read well at 4yo and the second couldn't even read Magic Tree House books until after 8yo. And I can even see that the next two may be the same way, with my current 4yo not interesed in letters at all and my 2yo already able to "read" everyone's names in our family and write some letters.

 

Many kids don't read at six. For my late reader we often put everything away for a while and I tried 3 or 4 different programs. Not because I didn't think the ones we were using would work, just because we were tired of looking at those same books and needed a fresh start.

[ABQmom]

Yikes! I meant to get up and get the book to see what lesson she is on. It's 72. We used it last year and we moved this summer and the book was in transit so we didn't do it for a few months. I backed up and retaught a bunch of lessons. I'm getting concerned because she reads almost each word letter by letter with me holding my finger over the letters and revealing one at a time. And, her older sister has struggled.

 

My dd is in first grade and she is my fourth child to go through OPGTR. She does exactly what your dd is doing--she's only on lesson 35. FWIW, none of my kids picked up reading before age 6 or 7. I felt anxiety with every one of them. Will they ever learn to read??! I just went as slow as the child needed and didn't give up. If it got stressful for either one of us, we quit for the day. We flashcard sight words, we write little notes to our emerging readers, and we play reading games--anything we can think of. Magnet letters, etc. Eventually, it happens. There is no way to tell where your child should be at this point. Just don't kill her love of books while you are teaching her to read. Read to her a lot. Hang in there, it will happen. :001_smile:

[Mama2two]

Yes, but you may just have a natural reader that would have done well with any program. :) We have been working very consistently for about 15 months now on OPGTR, and cannot get past the long vowel section. It is just too many rules for ds and will not click. I think it is developmental and normal for there to be fits and starts in learning to read. It just takes more review for some kids but I definitely think our 6 y.o. are within the range of normal!

 

I am also stuck at the same spot on OPGTR- long vowels- with my 6 year old son. Lots of rules and I think we will need LOTS of practice.

[ElizabethB]

You can use my game for extra practice. Some children need a lot more repetition to get it. You can also try working from a white board, that helps for my students.

 

Here are some b/d exercises:

 

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/dbdb.html

 

And, here is a silent e thread that you may find helpful:

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73087&highlight=silent+hop+hope

 

My daughter didn't need much phonics repetition, but certain things in math require a lot of repetition and different explanations.

 

My son doesn't need much math repetition, but he needs a lot of phonics repetition. You could also try adding in some spelling, that helps speed the process, I've found that my students retain as much from spelling 1 word as reading 10. At first, have them spell a word they've recently read. Then, when this is mastered, start spelling words of the same type that have been recently read. For example, you read hope, mate, safe, then you would have her spell late.

[Robin's Song]

My 6 yo daughter is in 1st grade. I started Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading in Kindergarten with her. We are at lesson and it is going slowly. She is still sounding out most words. She doesn't seem to get the silent e at the end makes the vowel say its name. I have to remind her with each word. She confuses b and d most of the time still. Should I be concerned? I have 6 kids. Her 10 yo sister is not a great reader. Two of her older brothers read really well. I'm wondering if my 6yo is on track or if she should be reading more easily. This is the first child that is using OPGTR.

 

I'm no expert, but this sounds normal to me. I tutored first graders in public school who did not know their letters :001_huh:. I didn't even begin learning to read until first grade. Some kids need more time with cvc words. Is she fluent in those? What about words like "quit"?

 

My daughter was frustrated with learning to read last year. She hated PP and it was becoming a struggle. She caught on easily, just hated it. Anyways, I stopped. Just stopped. She eventually became interested again and we picked back up with OPGTR (backing way up). I think she just needed some down time to practice everything she had learned and "chew the cud". She is now only on lesson 130 in OPGTR but she is reading the KJV and American Girl chapter books without help. She just needed to tread water for a while and then it clicked.

 

All that to say that maybe your daughter just needs a bit of time. Do you have letter magnets or tiles? Can you camp out on short vowels and blends? You could play matching games with letter cards, play with letter tiles, spell with magnets, etc.... HTH

[nono]

I had to slow down when I introduced it in K last spring, as I didn't want dd to hate the book. We started past the letter sounds, as she knew them. The lessons were a bit of struggle.

 

We did no formal reading program over the summer.

 

Now, she still really likes the book, and we're going through 3 lessons a week. Today, we did Lesson 47. We have a blast with the little stories! Once the lessons are clicking faster, we'll bump up to 5 or more lessons a week.

Edited September 22, 2010 by nono
edited for clarity

[TXMary2]

My 6 yo ds is on Lesson 55 - and we have been reviewing and re-doing lessons 45-55 for weeks and weeks. He cannot retain ank/ink/onk/unk or ang/ing/ong/ung - it is frustrating. I keep telling myself it is OK and that he will eventually get it.

[kilo90]

My 1st grade son was not doing very well last year with OPG. His older sister did very well with it in Kinder/1st grade. One day everything clicked for her and she's been reading crazy ever since. I kept plugging along with my son waiting for it to click like it did with her and no luck. I decided to pull out a McGuffey reader one day for him and he enjoyed it and did much better (not great but better). Dropped OPG for several months and only used the McGuffey readers. Over the summer things began to click for him. Now that he is 2nd grade we have gone back to OPG, he doesn't mind it, and he's doing great! We're only on lesson 85 and he's 2nd grade. We could probably skip ahead a good bit, but I would rather him get a solid base on everything. I totally wouldn't worry about where y'all are at in the book. I was fretting over it last year and in hindsight it was needless worrying (as usual).

 

Gloria

[waa510]

My 6 yo ds is on Lesson 55 - and we have been reviewing and re-doing lessons 45-55 for weeks and weeks. He cannot retain ank/ink/onk/unk or ang/ing/ong/ung - it is frustrating. I keep telling myself it is OK and that he will eventually get it.

 

 

 

UGH! I remember those lessons..we must have played that ing/ong/ung game a trillion times before it sunk in. Have you tried that? Sometimes the optional activities really help my DD since they don't look like school. :)

[ElizabethB]

My 6 yo ds is on Lesson 55 - and we have been reviewing and re-doing lessons 45-55 for weeks and weeks. He cannot retain ank/ink/onk/unk or ang/ing/ong/ung - it is frustrating. I keep telling myself it is OK and that he will eventually get it.

 

Move on!

 

Keep reviewing one nk and one ng word a day, but move on! These are very tough sounds for some children to master, some of the lessons that follow are easier.

[In2why]

If it makes you feel better my 7y/o young 2nd grader is only on lesson 49. He can read at a higher level, but it wasn't phonics, it was a lot of good guessing based on the pictures and sense of the sentence. I like OPGTR because it is without pictures and the sentences have to actually be read to be correct. I slowed him way down so that he could have a good grasp on reading and I don't regret it a bit. I think sometimes it is easy to panic when they aren't accelerated readers, and I know I get caught in comparing. But then I remember that I have known many early readers and later readers but by the age of 10-12 you can rarely tell them apart.

[Devotional Soul]

Explode the Code 3 has really helped my ds with silent e practice. It makes him really have to think about whether there is silent e or not and what sound the vowel makes. For example, there's a picture of a pin with the choices of pin or pine.