What does a reading tutor do?

[Anonymous]

What is your child's DRA level or what level books is she bringing home from school?

[Anonymous]

I don't know her DRA reading level, she likes the "I survived" books but I don't know how much she reads vs just kinda skims thru. She was like, oh I'm on chapter 11" but I knew no way she was that far into the book, I'll read a page and have her read one too. For instance, the word "politically" she just rushed right thru as "practically". I had to ask her to slow down, there is no "Pr" sound, etc. Otherwise, she brings home DK animal books but again, sure doesn't really read independently bc I think she's not confident to do it.

Will the school give a reading assessment? The teacher just says to keep practicing at home to build her stamina but no other concerns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know her DRA reading level, she likes the "I survived" books but I don't know how much she reads vs just kinda skims thru. She was like, oh I'm on chapter 11" but I knew no way she was that far into the book, I'll read a page and have her read one too. For instance, the word "politically" she just rushed right thru as "practically". I had to ask her to slow down, there is no "Pr" sound, etc. Otherwise, she brings home DK animal books but again, sure doesn't really read independently bc I think she's not confident to do it.

Will the school give a reading assessment? The teacher just says to keep practicing at home to build her stamina but no other concerns.

You didn't answer about spelling. You are describing my child, though. Please read my 9:26 post here: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/45/1029565.page

Even if she is not dyslexic, it is my belief you are describing someone who needs systematic synthetic phonics to thrive.

[Anonymous]

Can't hurt to email the reading specialist and ask them to test phonemic awareness. Also even if you find out her DRA is on grade level, it likely doesn't measure what you think it does and she can make a ton of mistakes and still pass.

[Anonymous]

OP here, her spelling is bad. She was spelling "of" as "uv" and anything with the "tion" she would write as "shun", like "direkshun" instead of "direction", all of this up until about 1 month ago. She can read that words fne but I was seeing it on the school worksheets she brought home, we have since fixed those errors. We are working on a spelling word list too. For instance, just tonight she wrote "halp" for "help", I had to say " hAlp, is that the vowel sound you hear? What makes an eh sound?" Then she immediately erased it and fixed it to an "e".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here, her spelling is bad. She was spelling "of" as "uv" and anything with the "tion" she would write as "shun", like "direkshun" instead of "direction", all of this up until about 1 month ago. She can read that words fne but I was seeing it on the school worksheets she brought home, we have since fixed those errors. We are working on a spelling word list too. For instance, just tonight she wrote "halp" for "help", I had to say " hAlp, is that the vowel sound you hear? What makes an eh sound?" Then she immediately erased it and fixed it to an "e".

I'm the mom with an OG tutor and your child sounds a lot like mine. All of this has improved a lot with tutoring help (or should I say halp, which btw, is a very, very common mistake according to our tutor).

Regarding the DRA - ask the teacher. They should have done an assessment at the very beginning of the year. My child has had two of them already, but I wouldn't have known if I wasn't in touch with the teacher semi-regularly about this. At this point, your child should be in the 20s somewhere, but sounds like she is probably in the teens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here, her spelling is bad. She was spelling "of" as "uv" and anything with the "tion" she would write as "shun", like "direkshun" instead of "direction", all of this up until about 1 month ago. She can read that words fne but I was seeing it on the school worksheets she brought home, we have since fixed those errors. We are working on a spelling word list too. For instance, just tonight she wrote "halp" for "help", I had to say " hAlp, is that the vowel sound you hear? What makes an eh sound?" Then she immediately erased it and fixed it to an "e".

She doesn't have them orthographically mapped well enough if she can't spell them. She's relying on shape, which explains the practically/politically thing and is what unskilled readers do.