kindergarten test

Doubt it.

Naming colours is only distantly related to learning to read. Many colourblind people (my father included) are excellent readers. There is a small relationship in visual perception and in verbal memory, but it’s not a strong link.

It takes time and hard work to learn to read, not something that happens overnight. And not-yet-halfway through kindergarten is early days yet.
A lot of kids in kindergarten *apparently* read well, but if you talk to Grade 1 and 2 teachers they will tell you in a whisper that it is so terrible, over the summer many of their students have “forgotten” how to read — actually, many kids were never really reading, just going by memory, and so they have to restart every year. So if many others in his class are apparently zipping ahead, see what they do an a book that they *haven’t* memorized yet and be reassured.

This would be a good time to start on a systematic program of teaching reading to him. Since he is still young, you can work at a reasonable pace without a lot of pressure, and quite likely pull ahead of grade level by next year. You can get good advice here and you can feel free to ask me for my outlines. You can work with him yourself or start with a tutor.

What she is trying to test is RAN—rapid automatic naming. She is using colors because he can not read yet. The results suggest that he will have to be over taught his letters and later words to achieve fluency. My son scores average on letters and numbers now after much intensive work but still scores low on colors. It isn’t that he doesn’t know them. He doesn’t retrieve them rapidly. It is this rapidly retreiving that is related to reading.

The fact that the other scores are normal is encouraging. Together these results suggest that it is reading fluently will be more of an issue than learning to read itself. Reading fluently may require more repetition than most kids require.

I am impressed that your son’s teacher/school is looking at this in K. It is truly the way it should be done. Kids that are likely to have trouble can be predicted from these sorts of tests and receive extra help before it snowballs into a full blown problem.

Beth

Well, I actually do agree with Beth here.

The idea of testing for learning problems is positive.
The problem I see is that the connection between rapid naming of colours and learning to read is quite weak. Slow colour naming can come from a number of sources from visual weaknesses to anxiety in a high-speed testing situation to lack of extensive experience in the skill to slow verbal retrieval. None of these need to interfere with learning to read, especially if you don’t build up the anxiety by more and more stressful testing. I’d see this test result as something to keep an eye on but not a huge red flag yet.

Beth’s advice on repeated teaching and practice is very good. This is part of what I was suggesting when I talked about starting in on systematic reading teaching, as soon as possible. Systematic means a planned progression, working gradually from simple to complex, direct teaching of all skills, and built-in repetition for practice and mastery. If you start now you can head a lot of problems off at the pass.

Thank you very much for your comments. Its a small school and the teacher is a reading specialist. I am a little worried because sometimes I notice he does seem to slow down to find the right word. He gets nervous, too.

I will tell his teacher about this website if she doesn’t know about it already. Its so helpful, just looking at all the other posts. Thanks again!

Well, he *should* slow down to find the right word. Hurry-up-and-guess is highly counterproductive for all students and a route to disaster for many.
What do you do yourself when you are reading something difficult, foreign words or a lot of new names or new scientific terms? I *hope* you slow down and analyze the new words. So why shouldn’t your child??

There has been some discussion here about what makes a reading specialist. Unfortunately, knowledge of actual scientific studies and what has been proven to work is not required. Many people take large numbers of courses about reading and then find themselves in schools with lots of theories and games but very little knowledge of how to actually teach. Your teacher may or may not be informed about effective techniques and materials.

Sorry, I wasn’t clear, I meant that when he speaks he slows down and doesn’t seem as quick speaking as the other kids. He has an amazing vocabulary, though, and maybe he is just trying to find a better word than he’s able to. He doensn’t want to read words yet.

The teacher is young but is looking at the kids because she said it’s easier to help them if there is a problem now. I’ll probably post more questions as the year goes on! Thanks.

Heck, I got to be a “reading specialist” without a whole lot of courses or activities. There’s a shortage of ‘em, so the Powers That Be make it an easy path :(