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5th Grader Falling Behind in Reading


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I have three kids all in public school.  I had been afterschooling from last June through Christmas when we moved, disrupting everything.  Their old school district is well regarded but very lax at the elementary level though rigorous once into middle and high school.  Spelling is not taught at all, for example, and they only just moved back to any sort of phonics instruction with my youngest child, but my middle one never had the benefit of any sort of focused language arts instruction.  I suppose they were supposed to pick up reading and writing through osmosis and my 5th grade son does not respond well to that manner of instruction.  We moved to a new school district that is less rigorous, particularly in middle school, but at the elementary levels at least holds kids to a standard that my son is not meeting.  He has fallen behind in reading especially and I have gotten zero feedback from his teacher, which has led me to believe this will be remediated only if I do it.  All of my afterschooling prior to now has been in math and writing to fill in the obvious gaps of their old district, but I have no experience with reading instruction, as all of my kids were reading above or at grade level according to their old school.

I have a ton of quality children's literature at home, though my son is not inclined to read any of it, preferring garbage graphic novels.  I feel like a curmudgeon, but I hate them and feel like it's hindering his reading development at this point and that's all he checks out of the library and reads.  When I have insisted on chapter books, he dutifully picks something out and then just won't read it.  He does respond well to read aloud tales and I've been making a point to try stories I think boys would find appealing.  He has a decent amount of non-fiction available to him as well, but I don't think he really reads any of it.  He does memorize fairly well so he has had no problems yet with history or science, but I know the reading for history will be beyond him in middle school unless something changes.  By inclination, he tends to laziness and lack of conscientiousness and will spend more time and energy avoiding schoolwork then it would take to actually complete said work.

Performance-wise, his skills strike me as only at the 4th grade level despite the fact that he tests at the 85th percentile for intelligence.  In reading The Well-Trained Mind, he seems a better fit still for grammar stage than logic stage so I guess I ought to trust my gut and start with the 4th grade recommendations?  My concern is that his reading base might be weak enough that might not be the right place to start and I have no idea how to properly assess his true skill level.  I am open to any suggestions short of pulling him from school and our schedules are such that I can work with him at least an hour everyday.  

 

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His vision was 20/20 last May though the new teacher mentioned he thinks my son might have trouble seeing, but when I asked for more info, I got no response.  That is was also his response, or lack thereof when I asked to meet after report cards came home earlier this month as I want to know what he is seeing in the classroom.  So far I have just been sending written notes which makes it easy to blow me off.

The reading unit assessments that have come home are multiple choice with garbage answers that I as an adult could argue and I have nothing more from the new school besides the below grade level note on his report card. His old teacher had mentioned at our fall conference that he wasn't showing the expected rate of progression in his DRA assessments but nothing about reading below grade level and just an encouragement to read more.  All of that aside, when I have my son read something and then tell me what he's read, he struggles with basic summarizing.  He remembers some but not all of the details and can't give me a top level view at all.  

Thank you for the vision screening question by the way.  I just looked up the school district policy on screening and they are supposed to test upon parental request so I will be pursuing that today as I can't go to the pediatrician for that until his next well child visit.

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DRA is Developmental Reading Assessment and he has done them every quarter since at least 2nd grade, but I think going back further so it would not being something unfamiliar to him.  I pulled out his first quarter score and he was a 48 up from a 47 at the beginning of the school year, which correlates to high 4th grade.  The scale is where 50 is considered the beginning of fifth grade and then 55 would be halfway through, 60 is beginning of sixth grade, and so on.  I do not know if his current school uses this same assessment system, but I'm now wondering if the old school was soft pedaling that he was falling behind in the fall as they knew we were moving and it wasn't going to be their problem anymore.

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1 hour ago, HeighHo said:

I asked if he is familiar, because if he is that means the school is actually teaching the terms needed to understand the questions and respond appropriately.  I've had my kid marked well under where he reads at because the school didn't teach the terms used in the above grade level tests, and the test giver can't explain them during the test.  

Personally I just used the Great Source Reader's Handbook  and flipped thru a Spectrum grade level workbook to see what was missing, then gap filled via lit discussion and selected units from the spectrum book and a reading test prep book.  I'd also recommend afterschooling vocab/word roots and listening to read-alouds or watching nature shows or myth busters.   

LoriD will probably stop in and give you a nice list of lit for boys this age/stage.  What chapter books has he read successfully? What's he interested in?  

Yes!  And, I would go for high interest books.  Has he read Percy Jackson or Harry Potter?  You could start something like that as a read aloud and when it gets to a cliff-hanger, leave it laying around.  If he asks for the next chapter, be sure to be in the middle of something, lol, so he will have to read it on his own.  I think that approach has worked for some in the past.  

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Go the Andrew Pudewa route on this: bring home good audio books. Have him listen while playing or building Legos. That can bridge the gap and continue exposing him to excellent language patterns. Sarah Mackenzie has a post and podcast episode about this -- saying basically, yes audiobooks totally count. If you get the first two Percy Jackson or Artemis Fowl books on audiobook, he may be willing to read the next in book form if you "can't find it" on audio. This worked for my son. He still reads garbage graphic novels too, but now he also reads big chapter books like secret Benedict society.

ETA: I shouldn't assume you know about Andrew Pudewa. His son couldn't read until he was 12, despite working on phonics one on one for years. But he listened to a ton of audiobooks. Pudewa says that of all his 7 kids, that child is the best writer and reader today, and he credits the exposure to good books even though he wasn't developmentally able to read well. I think chapter books can be a big jump for some.

Edited by Emily ZL
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I was able to get my son screened by the school nurse and his reading vision passes but his distance vision turned out to be 20/200.  Yikes!  Off to the optometrist for us, appointment is already made.  I went ahead and ordered the Spectrum workbook to see if it can help me pinpoint what he's having trouble with and we're going to keep reading pretty much any chapter book he's willing to read.  He just finished a book called Level 13 and liked it so I'm going to encourage him to keep trying that author.  He started Harry Potter but didn't love it so I'm going to try Percy Jackson and see if he likes those better instead.  I appreciate the audiobook recommendation as he responded well to those on a roadtrip last year.  And most importantly, I'm going to remember to relax and let him mature some more; he's ten, there is plenty of time.  Thank you so much for all of the help!

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My 12 year old still responds pretty well to team reading.  A couple of years ago it was he read a paragraph and I read a couple of pages.  We now just alternate pages.  He likes the time with mom and it allows us to get through books quickly enough not to lose the plot.  I can also assess comprehension as we go along.

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I would look for a developmental optometrist who could examine visual skills as well as acuity.  Www.covd.org is a good source for finding them. 
 

I would definitely look at his decoding ability.  Any idea what his level is there?

Audiobooks are great.  

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On 2/27/2020 at 12:30 PM, the_caroler said:

All of that aside, when I have my son read something and then tell me what he's read, he struggles with basic summarizing.  He remembers some but not all of the details and can't give me a top level view at all.  

Agreeing about the developmental optometrist. 

This is a red flag for having trouble with narrative language. The test for this is called the Test of Narrative Language, and if he has trouble with it, Mindwing Concepts has excellent remediation products.

If he does well with that kind of testing, then Spectrum and The Reader's Handbook will be good ways to build skills. 

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