Reading tests

I do not understand the point of the teacher having your child read easier material. It is possible that your child might even have a vision problem which is not directly related to reading that is causing the problems with function words, especially if he reads better using a book mark. You might want to considering looking into this possibility.

It is not unusual for spelling to lag behind reading. Your son probably needs more intensive spelling instruction, not easier reading materials.

Margo

Reference possible eye problems. You are right on the mark. My son was diagnosed with convergence insufficiency, as well as tracking problems caused by the convergence insufficiency last year. He went through 6 months of vision therapy. When he first started he could not handle small print and was confined to “readers” and large print books. After the therapy he was able to handle very small print but continued to make these strange errors. His doctor at this point says he is ok and should be able to read. Maybe its partially bad learned behavior, however the problem gets much worse later in the day making me suspect an eye strain problem. At this point though I think he has to learn to cope with it and find ways to keep himself on track.
As far as spelling. The words on spelling lists are generally words he is not likely to actually need to spell for years to come and high frequency words that he misspells are being ignored. Maybe I need to get out the list of the 500 most common words and create my own spelling lists.
Does any body have some suggestions for good materials I could use to help him in writing? I have been told by another teacher that there is absolute paranoia going on over the upcoming state tests in writing which may be provoking the problems I am having with the teacher. The thing is I don’t think he is getting adequate instruction in getting himself organized to write a book report. Just last week the teacher gave them instructions on how to determine what the main idea is in a story and then gave them a one paragraph story where the instructions did not apply. Also, my son was confused during the reading test when he was asked for information that was not contained in the reading. I had been telling him when you answer the comprehension questions you don’t make up what you would like to happen, or give information you obtained from other sources, you write about what the author said. When he was asked about things that were not in the story he got upset and confused. Anyway, I am told I am wrong. If someone asks you what will happened when George Bush Jr. leaves office you say what you think he will do. I can understand asking the kid “what do you think the president MIGHT do, but to ask the kid to make a statement about something he cannot possibly know…..I’ve got it from 2 teachers this is what they want now a days. Anyway, anyone know where I could get info on what types of writing he should be doing? I want to work with him over the summer so he can give them what they want to hear.

dear Bach,

your posts have done nothing but make my heart ache, yikes, help your son keep his ego strong, he will need it to survive the awful sounding teacher you have described, by the way, the words you listed in the above post that your son misspelled were segmented perfectly, hats off to him, he will eventually learn the code,

segmenting is the hardest and he can already do that, make sure to keep him segmenting when spelling, access the sounds first, then show him the code,

he sounds like a very cool kid to me, libby

Ouch.

There are arguments on both sides of this one.

Yes, something needs to be done, and no, your present teacher’s approach isn’t going to do a thing.

Missing short function words *is* a real problem. In upper elementary school and more so each year thereafter, you need accuracy in details. As a math teacher I tear my hair over this — if you read all the little stuff inaccurately, you bomb algebra. And the math teacher, science teacher, foreign language teacher, and so on, do not have time to address the reading weakness, since they barely have time to teach the curriculum as is. Also many kids who get high marks in primary grades in reading start to have real trouble on reading tests in higher grades, as the multiple-choice answers differ only by a few little words.
Often, skipping the little words is a clue to a phonics weakness — you say he decodes well, but have you had him tested in detail? A lot of kids do longer words by memory and guessing and picture clues, and rush over the little words to give more time to guess. He may be OK on consonants but weak on vowel patterns (very common, as vowel patterns are sometimes not taught at all) or he may have trouble with multisyllables (which again are sometimes not taught)

Your teacher’s approach of hold him back until he gets bored or frustrated enough to learn the work is obviously counterproductive. At this point in time, both in his school career and in the calendar, it’s too late to get any productive help from the school this year (if ever).
He should get some tutoring over the summer — not in a big center that will just run him through more worksheets, but with someone who will work with him one-to-one. A good tutor can check on the phonics, read with him and stress accuracy in details, and teach spelling with a logical approach. Although I haven’t used the program myself, I have heard good things on this board about AVKO Sequential Spelling, which works with phonics/sound patterns and teaches spelling from simple to complex, not randomly chosen lists.

Question — did you discuss with the teacher *why* she said he is unable to comprehend the more advanced books? I have been on both sides of this argument myself . As the parent of a gifted child who could not write due to age and slow fine-coordination development, I had to stare down a number of people who said she couldn’t read because she just looked too young (they were wrong, as she proved to anyone who would listen to her). But as a teacher, I have had a number of parents want to push their child ahead when he needed some foundation work first. There is a happy medium to aim for.

Your teacher appears to be a poor explainer, bith to your child in class and to you out of class. From what you have said, both in the reading comprehension and in the writing she seems to be attempting to teach making *inferences*. This is a difficult topic to teach anyway, and Grade 3 is a little early to be stressing it so strongly (Kids are not mature enough to do this at all until age 9 or 10, and can’t do it well until adolescence or high school).
In *oral reading* I stress strongly to students to read what is on the page and only what is on the page. This is vital for accuracy as I was mentioning. Unfortunately a lot of whole-language people somehow get inference-making mixed up with the fact of reading, and they encourage the kids to predict what word will come next and what ending the verb should have and to fill in what they think should be there, not what is printed there. I have discovered that this is a real killer for teaching grammar — since the kid says whatever ending the kid thinks should be there, it is impossible to point out changes that carry meaning, little things like present versus past tense, singular versus plural, changes of subject and point of view, pluperfect tense, and so on. This needs to be firmly discouraged.
On the other hand, once you have the actual words from the page in your mind, then you get to go beyond them. Are there any ideas “between the lines”? Much humour depends on things that are obvious to the reader but never directly stated. Are there any moral questions raised by the story? Does the author use any unusual word choices or sentence structures, and if so what is the effect? How can you figure out those new words from the context? What particulary non-literal idioms - for example reading between the lines - are used, and what is their meaning? What images does the reading passage raise in your mind? Now, for most Grade 2 reading, there isn’t much depth there to ask any of these things. By Grade 3 there’s some, and by Grade 4 things can be quite interesting.
I *think* from your talking at cross-purposes with your teacher, that she is trying to tell you that your son isn’t doing this kind of thing yet, and so she is keeping him back at what she sees as his comprehension level. You are saying that he can read the major vocabulary and follow the essential plot of Grade 4 books, and you don’t see why he can’t read them.
I had just the other day a student in Grade 3 who wanted to move ahead and read the harder books. Her decoding skill has improved to the point that indeed she can read the book she chose out loud. But she completely lost track of the plot by page 6, I don’t know why; just that we now have much longer sentences, much more vocabulary, and more things happening at once: two or three sub-plots, new characters, and ideas implied rather than laid on with a trowel. A good teacher in this case will spend some time discussing the difficulties with the student and will either teach the comprehension skills if the student is ready or go back to a slightly less complex level for a while if it still goes over the student’s head. Your teacher seems to be *trying* to say and do that but not being clear what it is needs to be learned. Also the program seems to have unrealistic expectations for the writing at this grade level.

On the writing: one simple assistance you can give is to buy a basic paperback dictionary and give it to him to keep in his bookbag or desk or one in each. But he shouldn’t be needing a dictionary every word — just too slow — so try the sequential spelling too.

As far as the questions for the writing, it is almost traditional that they be badly written. These kinds of things are usually made up by a committee trying to develop a writing program for the elementary school. They have mutually contradictory goals, to ask very deep questions to develop higher-order thinking skills and to keep the reading level down to grade level. By the time the committee has hacked at the questions no rational person can figure them out. I remember tutoring one Grade 1 boy whose “writing prompt” was “What would you pack to go to Mexico?” This was a city kid from Washington DC who had probably never been more than five miles from home in his life — not only did he not know what Mexico was, he had no idea what it meant to pack or to go away.
The best way I know to teach this kind of thing is to dicusss the reading in detail, not just the facts, but all the inferences and ideas you come up with. After much oral discussion, putting some ideas on paper is less scary.

Bach,
I am finding that few schools teach children in the younger grades how to write in an organized way. My extremely bright third grader was reduced to tears last night when trying to do a four to six sentence summary of a book for a report. Like many kids she was trying to pack in all her favorite details, which simply can’t be done when it’s that short. During a conference, I had pointed out to her very kind teacher that she had had problems with an earlier summary assignment and that perhaps the class needed some instructions on how to do it. As oftens happens, the instruction seems to be giving more of the same assignments.

I have been researching writing methods on the web—especially the homeschooling boards. The method that has intrigued me most is by the Institute for Excellence in Writing. It takes a very systematic approach in lieu of trying to build up writing skills through assignments like “describe a pencil.” (This is an actual starting assignment in one of the writing books—how well I can picture the blank stare my son would give if confronted with this!) The main drawback of IEW for me is that the method is taught through videotaped lectures that are accompanied by notes.

Nonetheless, I plan on going this route this summer for my own kids because nothing else I’ve seen out there takes such a structured approach, while being suitable for younger children. The URL is writing-edu.com. The website is tricky to navigate, but take a few minutes to check out the articles section, especially “Writing Without Tears” (wished I had that last night!), which gives a very concrete presentation of the introduction to the method. You can also view 15 minute segments of the videos on the website, which will give you a very good idea of what they are like. In addition to the teaching videos, I ordered the intensive student workshop video and did a bit of it with my son over spring break. He took it fairly well, which in my book is a success. Good luck.

DIBELS is great, as is everything on the DIBELS website including the Big Ideas in Beginning Reading section.