book levels- update

My son is in the opposite situation. His teachers feel he reads better than I do and the standardized tests support my position-he recently qualified for school tutoring based on a ‘pre-statetest’ screening.

I do think the teachers would consider your suggestions if reading testing showed good scores.

Would they be open to a one book trial of your thoughts? Instead of approaching it as ‘this is where he should be and always should have been” could you ask that they move him to a more difficult book just this one time and see if there is a difference?

They tried to pull this with my son. So, I bought the visualizing and verbalizing material to improve his comprehension. As you may know it teaches children to make mental pictures of concepts to improve comprehension. I found that my son could make incredible mental pictures of concepts. I did not need to teach him this. It makes sense too because he scored in the 96% in vocabulary.

One of the books was visualizing and verbalizing stories. (You could get this at the LMB website.) This book is a series of short passages with questions attached. My son could do every story and answer every question even the passages meant for eighth graders. I brought the book into his last IEP meeting and explained this.

I got, as expected, alot of blank stares.

When my son is given low books he gets bored and loses his focus. He then can’t comprehend a thing.

my heart aches for you and your son, why oh why do schools treat kids like morons, always “read up” is my motto, if your son has a good oral vocabulary he needs and should be reading harder stuff,

it seems teachers never stiffle the good readers, when they get stuck, they tell them to sound it out, yet when struggling decoders sound out the words, their hair catches on fire,

i tutor lots of kids and each and every parent faces the same battle, school wants to dumb it all down, god forbid, we might frustrate them, is that not how we learn??? we get frustrated and then we solve a problem, it is how all inventions come about,

it is hopeless scriabin, just supplement what you can and fight hard for what you believe,

by the way, both my two grown sons read the Inidan in the Cupboard and hated it, and one is headed to an Ivy league school in the fall,

i cannot understand what motivates teachers to seem to want to punish kids who are trying to sound out words etc,

if your son can watch a TV show and tell you about later, his comprehension is fine, and i am sure from your posts that you and your husband spend hours engaging him in conversation,

you will never convince the school sciarbin, they will only see a disabled reader and nothing else,

good luck and get your son a good book to read, has he tried Rhode Dahl,
get Matilda,

or anything he wants to try

libby

marycas wrote:
>
> My son is in the opposite situation. His teachers feel he
> reads better than I do and the standardized tests support my
> position-he recently qualified for school tutoring based on a
> ‘pre-statetest’ screening.
>
> I do think the teachers would consider your suggestions if
> reading testing showed good scores.
>
> Would they be open to a one book trial of your thoughts?
> Instead of approaching it as ‘this is where he should be and
> always should have been” could you ask that they move him to
> a more difficult book just this one time and see if there is
> a difference?

marycas wrote:
>
> My son is in the opposite situation. His teachers feel he
> reads better than I do and the standardized tests support my
> position-he recently qualified for school tutoring based on a
> ‘pre-statetest’ screening.
>
> I do think the teachers would consider your suggestions if
> reading testing showed good scores.
>
> Would they be open to a one book trial of your thoughts?
> Instead of approaching it as ‘this is where he should be and
> always should have been” could you ask that they move him to
> a more difficult book just this one time and see if there is
> a difference?

Actually that is what happened and now they are saying he can’t do it but the kid has perked up enormously with the book and in fact read most of the books in the series and wants to read the last one. Some of the books in the series are even more difficult than the assigned one and he loves it.

thanks for all your kind words. My son loves the Dahl books. He also loves this indian in the cupboard series. I would say he loves it better than anything he’s ever read before. He even loved the Mystery in the cupboard which I thought would be too mature for him since it is not action packed like the others but deals with prejudice against an unmarried mother by family members who are shamed of her and her offspring.. I had a chance to re-read the book he was evaluated on. I’m more upset. The college educated people in my office did not come up with the answers the teacher wanted. The kid was right. There are numerous references in the book to whiskey being used as medicine even by medical people. The real American Indian I work with said to tell the teacher how offended she was that he wanted the kids to associate the whiskey in the book with alcohol. I’m not sure I would go that far. I asked my son at home, without making reference to the book, what whiskey was and he said “I think it is some kind of alcohol”. I asked “what does it do to you”? and he said it makes you drunk. So I think he was trying to answer based on the book and the teacher just jumped to the wrong conclusions. No one in my office could define dolefull either. After I re-read the book and reviewed his answers I feel more confident that the child really did understand the book and maybe teacher needs to re-read it and the others in the series and not just read a few isolated paragraphs before coming up with questions.

I have been in this situation too! Kid brighter than the teacher. That IS a tough one.

My son hated his last sped teacher and I don’t think she liked him very much. She was a dull, uninteresting woman. She even had a rather flat affect.

Most people find my son very sweet, bright and charming. His new teacher raves about him.

Must be tough to be threatened by a 9 year old.

SOmetimes they don’t really read the books so they rely on the “given” answers.

Hi scriabin,

Can you start refusing extra “help” for your son? Maybe he would do just fine in regular classes on his own now, given all the work you’ve done with him.

I just checked one paragraph of Indian in the Cupboard, and it was written at about an 8th grade level on the Frye Readability Graph (137 syllables/100 words in 4.5 sentences.) That’s probably a little high, but I suspect it’s written at a junior high level at least. What grade is your son in now?

By the way, if he’s reading the whole collection because he wants to, there’s no question that he’s comprehending. Kids don’t voluntarily read anything on a sustained basis that they aren’t capable of comprehending. Sure, they’ll run into unfamiliar words, but that’s how we learn them…we see them in context enough times that we form an impression as to the correct meaning…and usually it’s pretty close.

Keep at it…..Rod

Rod wrote:
>
> Hi scriabin,
>
> Can you start refusing extra “help” for your son? Maybe
> he would do just fine in regular classes on his own now,
> given all the work you’ve done with him.
>

Actually my son is in a regular class. Sorry. I should have stated that. I sincerely hope he is NOT getting any help from the reading specialist because that help would probably consist of covering over words and asking him to guess.

> I just checked one paragraph of Indian in the Cupboard,
> and it was written at about an 8th grade level on the Frye
> Readability Graph (137 syllables/100 words in 4.5
> sentences.) That’s probably a little high, but I suspect
> it’s written at a junior high level at least. What grade is
> your son in now?
>

My son is in 4th grade. I agree the vocabulary level is high and it is ludicrous to expect even a prolific reader to be familiar with all the words. In this reading program the phonetic difficulty of individual words and the probability that the child has been exposed to the vocabulary are not considered when assessing difficulty of reading material. It goes by the complexity of the story line, the number of pages, pictures. If you look at Pinnell/Fountas’s new k-3 (Yes I said -grade3 book guide you will find “Bunnicula” which is RL6 according to publisher in the same difficulty level as Fantastic Mr Fox-Dahl.which my son found very easy. In fact the authors say to ignor publishers rating and use their criteria.
By the way, if he’s reading the whole collection because
> he wants to, there’s no question that he’s comprehending.
> Kids don’t voluntarily read anything on a sustained basis
> that they aren’t capable of comprehending. Sure, they’ll run
> into unfamiliar words, but that’s how we learn them…we see
> them in context enough times that we form an impression as to
> the correct meaning…and usually it’s pretty close.
>
Oh How I wish I could convince the teacher of that. If there were lots of colorful pictures it would be different but there are not.
I reolize I made a tragic error showing the reading specialist that he could sound out words well. She honestly and truely believes that when a child is sounding out words that they can not be comprehending. She believes it is important to skip the word or do contextual guessing to find “meaning”. She’s got the whole language jargon down pat. Now he is a “word caller” in the eyes of the school.

You know I found the page the teacher asked him to read (Indian in the Cupboard pg 94) I personally would never have used pg 94 to assess a childs reading of that book. The teacher said his reading was slow, choppy and he had reverted to reading word by word. Adults out there, try reading this outloud. Does your voice “flow” the way it normally does in reading?

” Like danger! Here too quiet. No hunting. Him only enemy, he said scornfully, peering over the edge of Omri;s hand at the cowboy, who, despite the softness of his landing place was only scrambling to his feet. “Look! He no use for fight. Little Bear soon kill, take scalp, finish”

While most of the individual words in this particular selection are not difficult, the indian’ language consists of very short sentences that violate normal grammar which makes it hard to read orally. Also the one sentence that is grammatically correct is quite lenghty and cumbersome. I just…..I don;t know what you do in a situation like this.

Take a deep breath and go do something fun like a walk in the snow or painting a picture. If your son can sound out and can read and understand and enjoy books like this, and if he is reading for fun, you have won the reading battle. (Keep up the necessary work in other areas of course.) Tell the school where to go (well, in your own mind at least, no use antagonizing them more.)

Then take your child aside after school and tell him the awful truth that every bright child has to learn sometimes: some adults are idiots. Many of these idiots choose to become teachers, because they can stay at a learning level they comprehend, have authority over a small pond where they are the biggest frogs, and rarely have to deal with adult challenges. Bright kids are often smarter than their teachers in many ways, and more knowledgeable in many fields. Let him know that you are on his side and you agree that what the school is doing is crazy.

Now that that is settled and you have taken a huge load of stress off his back, look at ways to deal with the situation. Remind him that while *some* teachers are hopeless, there are also good people out there and he shouldn’t pre-judge all teachers and make trouble. Remind him that even if his teacher doesn’t know how to teach reading, there are still many things to learn in school, math and science and social studies, and he needs to concentrate on the material and not on arguments. Remind him that the teacher has to keep the class organized and that nobody will learn anything if people are arguing, so to maximize his chances of getting something worthwhile out of the year he should go along with the flow and just read and do what he can and is interested in. If he gets a too easy book for reading group, read it, then read another that he likes better. Keep a good library book in his desk for those wasted times. At worst he keeps occupied with something worthwhile, and at best the teacher notices and decides he has “learned” to read from her and raises his level.

For yourself, remember that NOBODY ever looks at Grade 4 marks once you’re out of elementary school. All those A’s are totally gone and forgotten in the bottom of mother’s trunk. In fact, most junior high grades are forgotten too. Universities use Grade 11 and 12 marks, maybe sometimes Grade 10, plus SAT’s, for admission. So all this pain and stress is utterly pointless in the long run. Yes, you want to encourage him in good work habits, and yes, you want him to do well in school and develop the habit of working for good marks so that he will succeed when he gets to those senior levels, but a blip or two on the record is just a blip.
The other issue of concern is that next year and in junior high or middle school you don’t want him tracked down into the “dumb” group. There are many techniques: you can wait and see — next year’s teacher and the one after that will probably re-group the kids anyway. Although they won’t admit it, many elementary teachers don’t have much respect for the other teachers and ignore previous placements. Especially now you are coming to the crunch level, where the facile memorizers who apparently “succeeded” so well in primary hope-and-guess are starting to hit that brick wall, and the kids who can sound out are starting to pull ahead. The upper elementary/middle teachers may be quite happy with him. You can find out what criteria are used in placement in the middle/junior high level; if they use standardized tests you should be fine. You can threaten to take him out and homeschool; school boards don’t like to lose student money so they often come around. You can actually homeschool for a while, if that works well for you. Private school for a year or to is sometimes an option. In a real emergency you can move to a new district. The trick here is to tell his present school that you are going to be in temporary quarters for a period of time and you haven’t yet found a new permanent home, so instead of sending his school records through the school you have to take them with you. They don’t like to do this but it is possible (Freedom of Information). Then you remove anything that is really false from the records before turning them over.

In summary, don’t panic, give the kid ownership of his own education now that he has reached the level where it is reasonable, look at all the options, and look back and remember how useless your own Grade 4 experience was in general and how little it affected your adult life, and relax.

Thank you so much. That was a beautiful reply. I may take that walk around the block. Since it’s about 15 degrees out there I might cool off. Seriously though, you really brightened my day. Thanks.

Hi Victoria,

I suspect that the reason you took me to task the other day was partly because I’m not the type to add to these threads with “I agree with you completely” comments and besides, I only agree with you about 98 percent of the time.

In this case, however, and against my personal policy, let me say that I agree with you 100 percent on this one.

Scriabin, you’ve won the major battle…the rest will likely just be minor skirmishes Paraphrasing Victoria, relax and enjoy it……Rod

nnn