My nephew is in kindergarten in public school. My sister told me that he is behind in his reading (level 1 while he should be at a level 3). He supposedly knows his phonics sounds, but isn't really sounding out a lot of words. He is extremely distracted often. I'm not sure if it's a video game overload or a junky diet issue (unfortunately both a possibility for him), or if it's just his nature, or even perhaps something medical. Since my son has been learning so much with reading and given me experience teaching him, she has asked my help in tutoring him. He has been given one month to bring his reading level up, or he will need to attend summer school. Any advice on some fun methods of teaching reading? Video game based might even do the trick for him if necessary. Thanks!
Summer school cause he is not reading well enough in K!?! That's just crazy!! Some kids just are not ready at that age. And if they are forced to, they will likely end up hating reading . No advice about how to go about it, but good luck.
I know. Unfortunately, that's the reality (one of the many reasons we probably all have chosen homeschooling!) or else he'll just get further and further behind. It's so fast paced now. That doesn't work for kids like my nephew. I was in public school, and we didn't even start reading until 1st grade.
Have you looked at ABC Mouse? I see that advertised all the time. Buy some magnetic letters and a magnet board and let him physically manipulate the letters to for sounds and words. You can also buy colorful kindergarten workbooks at Wal-Mart. This whole push to get kids reading in K is so unfair to some of them. Not all kids are ready to read at that age! I hope you find something that will work for him!
Netflix has the Leap learning movies. There's one on letters, but the good one is complex words. They talk about silent e and putting sounds together. I put that on for my crew a few times lately to reinforce what I'm teaching DD. Reading eggs has a couple of free ipad apps too. My daughter found them more helpful when I sat with her to do them though. I was just thinking that if he's a fast paced kid, maybe a couple of multimedia options might be helpful too. I hope you can help him turn the corner, but I know my DS1 would have been in that situation too. He just needed time. By the beginning of grade 1 he was really reading well. Hopefully having a different face helping him will take some pressure off too.
I will check out ABC Mouse, thank you! I need for whatever it is to be free or super cheap, unfortunately, so I hope I can find a good online source that is. I know Starfall might work for him, too. I actually have a whiteboard with magnet letters from our AAR. I'm going to use AAR for him (as a guide, since I won't have a student workbook for him). Yeah, I think he might just need more time to settle down. He's still young, so behavioral issues at this age might just be temporary due to his maturity level. I think if they want to teach more aggressively, that's one thing, but they should allow for some kids to take more time to adjust!
My son loves the Leapfrog shows! Phonics Farm was a major contributor to his learning his letter sounds. I will have him watch that if I feel that he needs phonics sounds reinforcement. I actually bought the one with the silent e machine since it was not on Netflix (except my son won't watch it because he is afraid of the duck - haha! I just play it in certain spots and he is ok with it). I will definitely play that for my nephew when he builds up to that level. I was thinking having a different face might help, too. Probably more annoying for his mom to try to help him than his fun aunt. ;] I hope. Haha. Plus, we don't have video games for him to get distracted with, so maybe that will help him focus. He gets bored with it almost instantly.
Personally, the push for ALL kids to read at 5 is a huge reason we started homeschooling. PS Kindergarten was rough on my oldest because he simply wasn't ready to blend sounds. Anyway, here are 20 free resources for phonics/reading you might find helpful.
I was going to suggest Starfall too. I also think that maybe he just isn't ready yet. My thought is to skip summer school and just repeat K if he has to. If you're going to repeat, K would be the place to do it, IMO.
Thanks for the link! That's a big reason for me as well. This method is only causing low confidence and frustration in kids - and giving them so much homework that family time is practically taken away! *Edit* Hey, I can link now! =]
That's very possible. According to my sister, he's doing fine in everything else, but reading is a very important foundation. That's not what his teacher wants for him, though, and I know my sister would want to avoid that. I think both his reading skills and his maturity level would be better balanced if he repeated K as well, but it's not my call.
http://progressivephonics.com/ and www.starfall.com are my two favorite freebies out there. Starfall is more fun for a child to do alone, but progressive phonics is something better for a child and adult to do together. It's more instructional. I love Explode the Code more than any other reading program in any form, but it's not free. There is an online version and a workbook version. I prefer the workbooks.
I wish he had Internet access at home, but unfortunately, he doesn't. Just my sister's cell phone, which would be too annoying to use. I might try some of those here and ask my parents to set it up for him when he goes over there at least. I wish we could spend money on something for him, but our own kids are going to be expensive enough with all of the homeschool costs. =[
