What next?

[3monkeys]

My ds just turned 7 and is in 1st grade. He has completed 100 EZ lessons, Reading Eggs, and is about done with AAS 1. He still struggles with fluency and wants to sound everything out. I really thought he would be further along than he is but he is making progress. So do I chalk it up to developmental or should I add another reading program? If so, which one?

[Lisa in the UP of MI]

For my kids, I've found that at some point things just click. One day they are slooowly sounding each word out and the next day they pick up a book and read the whole thing. We do informal word building, then a combination of AAS (used for teaching spelling) and reading games (where only reading one word at a time is required). One jumped into reading at 4.5yo and the next at 6.5yo. If he was making progress I wouldn't be concerned. Yet.

[JudoMom]

I used an earlier edition of Reading Pathways to help with fluency.

[4peanuts]

I am not familiar with Reading Eggs or AAS, so I don't know what you've covered with those, but here's what I did after completing 100 EZ with my two dd's. I used the SWR phonogram cards to introduce advanced phonograms that were not covered in EZ. I created my own version of a "Sounds Journal" --When I introduced a new phonogram I would write it on a page (numbered a la SWR to indicate each of its multiple sounds, if applicable) Underneath each sound variation, I wrote a short list of words that had that phonogram in it--Oh, and I wrote it EZ style, meaning along an arrow with the dots underneath it so they could sound it out/say it fast the way they were used to.

 

We also started in with CLE Reading 2 at that point, so the sounds journal was just a supplemental activity, but this was just to continue/develop their skills at decoding more advanced words. (And I should say, we did not do the phonics activities in the CLE workbook...I just used the reader and some of the content/discussion parts of the workbook)

[4peanuts]

Just re-read your post and wanted to add one more suggestion based on your comment that he still wants to sound everything out. Before he reads whatever book or story you are having him read, it may be helpful for you to go through the text and make a list of words that you think he may find challenging. You can have him pre-read this list of words and deal with any sounding out/decoding difficulties ahead of time, so that when he encounters them in the story he may be able to read through it with more fluency.