It's been awhile since i've had a chance to come visit here but i have a dilema I know y'all can help me with. My daughter has struggled blood sweat and tears over R&S reading this past year. She is a very slow reader and often completely skips small words so loses meaning of sentences. I feel like i'm failing her and that if she ever needs to go to ps she will be really behind. The last couple of weeks I read out loud with her just so she could complete her work. Now i would like to give her a fresh start. No trying to catch up just a clean slate... R&S is obviously not a good fit even though she excels in all the other areas math especially. Can anyone reccomend a solid reading program for 4th grade that is maybe more visual than R&S. She reads one chapter book a week for quiet reading but her library books are ALWAYS picture books
You might want to drop back and punt, by switching to Pathways readers. I suggest going back to the third grade level, or even second, just for confidence's sake, and working through it before going on to the 4th. They have only small workbooks, and usually a lesson has one page of phonics-related stuff, one page of vocabulary related stuff, and one page of comprehension questions, and sometimes a page that has a brief story (totally different than the textbook story) with comprehension questions. I usually spend two days on a story - one to do the phonics and vocabulary pages, and one to do the comprehension questions. I've used the 2nd grade R&S as Bible -- and we'll try the 3rd grade one next week when we start back. I've tried to use the 4th grade level before, and it's TOUGH, especially for a child who is a slow reader. You can find Pathways readers here: www.rodandstaffbooks.com and I believe they have sample pages posted.
Have you had her eyes tested (by someone trained in educational vision for kids... not just an optometrist)? Skipping small words is a sign of a tracking problem. I have tracking problems and Irlen syndrome. I'm a great reader, but it's very, very difficult for me. I wasn't diagnosed until 19, so I always thought I was stupid. I still prefer "picture books" (like magazines rather than books or websites rather than articles in a newspaper). I also have trouble with certain fonts. For example, Arial lower case a's and e's look very different, but Times lower case letters start to all look the same to me very quickly. There are a lot of lesser used fonts that are even harder than Times for me (like Georgia).
Thanks for your replies. I let her try the preview of CLE 4th grade and she did really well :S so i ordered the reader and the lightunits For $30 it's worth a fresh start. But i kept wondering wht she read so well the preview.. then it hit me My computer is set to 200% Aha!!!! She does use glasses so i didnt think it could be her vision as we already had it tested. So I spent some time researching education vision tests and was surprised that not all children's optomotrists test for those kinds of problems. So I found a vision specialist and will be making an appt first thing tomorow. Wish us luck
