Thankfully, school is almost out. My daughter is reading above first grade level, according to the report card in April, and has successful skills for decoding unfamiliar words according to the teacher's comments. But what surprises me is that the homework coming home for the last month or so has concerned blends such as st, sw, sl, and similar combinations. I'm really not sure why blends which seem so fundamental to me would be addressed so late in the year.
We have not been reading every single night as the sports season has become more intense for us - 3 nights a week and Saturdays between the sports for the two kids. And, when we sat down to read a challenging chapter book tonight I caught my daughter guessing again. I had to make her once again focus on the letters in the words. I also told her that I realize they are letting her guess at school, but that her guesses are most of the time wrong when sounding out gets it right most of the time. And, I told her that i am telling her she is wrong because I love her and I want to help her and I know she can do it. I also wouldn't let her give up either and I cut the guessing off. Cutting her off wasn't easy because the guesses were coming at 4-5 guesses in seconds. She even asked me one time if she could go back and read the rest of the sentence and figure out the word that way (context clues)and I told her no and helped her sound the word out. If I wasn't there to track her reading accuracy, she would have just gone on thinking the words were right.
This really just lets me know that I'm not going to be able to let my guard down on this guessing. It is really going to take a long time to get rid of - they've let her use the easy way out which is wrong. What kid is going to rise to the challenge if they aren't given a chance but instead are cut off at the knees because accuracy has no role. She's so incredibly capable of more and it really burns me that the school gave her this practically handicapping crutch.
I'm just so thankful that school is almost out. Perhaps I can drill this out of her before the beginning of the next school year.
My next goals are to work on prefixes and suffixes. I think I might also work on spelling because I've noticed that she is doing really well at the spelling and I think her process of thinking out how to spell helps her reading.
As for my son, who is starting kindergarten this fall, I'm not sure what to do. His interest in working with me is sporadic and is limited when he is interested. If I can show him a video he's more likely to pay attention than he would to me. In the worst case scenario, I will working with him on each sight word as it comes out and show him how to sound it out - except the few that are not really phonics based, and I mean FEW.
