Reading......again.

Here I go blogging about Sam and reading.....again. Honestly, you would never know that I've already had one child who was a "late" reader. A late reader who just aced her college entrance exams thank you very much.

I did have another eureka moment when talking about Sam and grade level placement. If I had sent Sam to PS I would have held him back a year and he would only be in Kindergarten this year. Looking at all the variables......summer birthday....prematurity......speech motor issues.....male......holding him back a year would've been the only alternative. When compared to K'rs his reading is awesome. So I really need to just relax a bit and keep plugging along.

I had seriously thought about trying yet another reading program. Instead we have spent the last few months focusing on speed and fluency using the resources that we owned. His speed and fluency have improved! We just recently picked back up with 100 EZ lessons with much success. I am not going to add back in ETC online because I think that is where he was picking up his "cheats". I am also going to restart using AAS. AAS plans on adding corresponding readers so AAS will be our ongoing reading/spelling program. Sam has missed doing AAS in the past few months. Missed doing spelling???? I know it sounds like an oddity but it is the truth.

Our ongoing reading program will be composed of 100 EZ lessons( to get to independent reading), All About Spelling (to learn all the phonograms) and Pathway readers for a controlled vocabulary reader until he gets to reading chapter books independently.

I will forget about grade levels. I will forget about grade levels. I will focus on mastery. I will focus on mastery. That will by my mantra! Thinking of this year as Sam's Grade 1 has been a mistake. If I did not start thinking in terms of grade level, I think that I would have been more content to let him learn to read at his own pace instead of comparing him to some hypothetical first grader who is an advanced reader! Actually I think that is the best assessment of Sam's reading ability. He's doing fine when allowed to learn to read at his own pace....I'm the one with the problem. My problem is that I'm trying to have him compete with some hypothetical advance reader and I'm pushing him too much.

Ahhhh....glad I figured that out!