From the time they are in kindergarten through third grade, all children need to be making weekly progress toward learning how to read.
In the early years, children should be learning sight words or high-frequency words like at, and, the, then, what, and when. By the end of kindergarten and into first grade your child鈥檚 teacher should be providing explicit phonics lessons, which means learning letter sounds, such as consonants (e.g. b, c, d, etc.), consonant blends (e.g. sh, th, ch, etc.), and short and long vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u).
Ask the teacher
If your child is being taught high-frequency words but not learning to sound out words (teachers call this decoding), you need to ask a few more questions. All children need to be able to sound out (or decode) new words. By second grade, kids should not be trying to recognize new words or using picture clues to figure out words. They should be breaking words down into sound chunks and getting quicker and more sophisticated as the weeks go by.
Check in with your child鈥檚 teacher frequently to make sure your child is moving forward. You don鈥檛 want to hear vague assurances such as 鈥測our child is doing well鈥� or 鈥測our child is poorly behaved,鈥� or that your child raises their hand before speaking (or not), or knows how to use glue. Your child鈥檚 teacher should be able to describe to you in some detail your child鈥檚 incremental movement forward or the specific area where she is falling short in reading skills.
Plan of action
When your first grade child isn鈥檛 making progress in reading or seems to have reached a plateau, you need to move quickly. Ask for a meeting with your child鈥檚 teacher. If that鈥檚 not effective, ask for a meeting with the reading specialist at the 黄色app.
Your first question for the reading specialist should be asked privately. Ask the reading specialist to describe his or her training. In some 黄色apps, the job of reading specialist is given to a teacher with a high level of training in teaching kids to read. Sometimes this is a teacher who, year after year, was able to get and keep all their students at grade level. Often, though, the job of reading specialist is given to a longtime teacher as a reward. If you are meeting with a reading specialist who is the latter rather than the former, downscale your expectations for the meeting.
Once the teacher and specialist and maybe the principal have assembled, you鈥檙e looking for a plan of action. You don鈥檛 want to hear anyone say, 鈥淵our child鈥檚 just not ready,鈥� or 鈥淵our child will catch up,鈥� or 鈥淲e need to wait another year until your child is farther behind in order to get help,鈥� If you hear 鈥淢aybe we need to hold your child back until they are ready to read,鈥� you鈥檒l need to ask even more questions. There are some reasons for holding kids back that may make sense (although the research here is not clear). But for most struggling readers, learning to read is not a question of maturity.
Don鈥檛 wait until it鈥檚 too late
The real question is: 鈥淲hat about next year鈥檚 instruction will be different from this year鈥檚 instruction?鈥� Giving your child the same ineffectual method of reading instruction for another year is not going to help. You want to leave that meeting with a thoughtful, targeted plan of attack, one that starts tomorrow. If you don鈥檛 get it, you may need to find the resources to bring in a specially trained tutor.
