Advanced readers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2nd grade level isn't that advanced. remember the grade levels are based on a fairly low bar. Make sure she knows all her letter blends and letter sounds. Talk about common prefixes and suffixes. Phonics might not be covered with enough depth at your school. Vocabulary building is helpful for building reading comprehension skills. Look at the Wordly Wise series of workbooks.

I strongly disagree with this advice. The best way to improve vocabulary is through reading and talking, not through direct vocabulary instruction like workbooks -- especially for beginning readers.

I agree that teaching vocabulary out of context isn't the most effective way to teach it. I would say read chapter books together and pull out teaching points (you can find pre-made questions online for many books on sites like Scholastic, etc.) Focus on building her comprehension skills and fluency. Unfortunately her teacher might not be able to support her advanced math skills so that is the area you should focus on at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2nd grade level isn't that advanced. remember the grade levels are based on a fairly low bar. Make sure she knows all her letter blends and letter sounds. Talk about common prefixes and suffixes. Phonics might not be covered with enough depth at your school. Vocabulary building is helpful for building reading comprehension skills. Look at the Wordly Wise series of workbooks.

I strongly disagree with this advice. The best way to improve your vocabulary is through reading and talking, not through direct vocabulary instruction like workbooks -- especially for beginning readers.

Kids will only get so far learning vocab on their own especially when they are reading harder books then their reading level. This is because they will skip the word all together and not even really try to give it a meaning because they get the general idea from the rest of the sentence and sentences. Often the bigger words they can not even sound out properly in 1 or 2nd grade yet. This is one of the major reasons I saw that kids who were advanced readers in K, 1st, and 2nd leveled off in 3rd. They were at the point that they needed to be able to understand all the words in context.

So yes, the majority of kids are going to need direct vocabulary instruction at some point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2nd grade level isn't that advanced. remember the grade levels are based on a fairly low bar. Make sure she knows all her letter blends and letter sounds. Talk about common prefixes and suffixes. Phonics might not be covered with enough depth at your school. Vocabulary building is helpful for building reading comprehension skills. Look at the Wordly Wise series of workbooks.

I strongly disagree with this advice. The best way to improve your vocabulary is through reading and talking, not through direct vocabulary instruction like workbooks -- especially for beginning readers.

Kids will only get so far learning vocab on their own especially when they are reading harder books then their reading level. This is because they will skip the word all together and not even really try to give it a meaning because they get the general idea from the rest of the sentence and sentences. Often the bigger words they can not even sound out properly in 1 or 2nd grade yet. This is one of the major reasons I saw that kids who were advanced readers in K, 1st, and 2nd leveled off in 3rd. They were at the point that they needed to be able to understand all the words in context.

So yes, the majority of kids are going to need direct vocabulary instruction at some point.

But the point is that it should be in relation to what they are reading. They are called context clues. Wordly Wise teaches vocabulary in isolation. It is not directly connected to what the child is reading. Somehow we managed to learn an extensive vocabulary when I was in school through conversations and something called a dictionary.

[Anonymous]

Many many kids in my 1st grader's class are reading at a second grade level. That does not sound advanced to me at all. Adding three digit numbers seems a bit more advanced, frankly. So focus on the reading to make sure she stays at a reasonable level, but don't make her feel bad about herself by pushing her too hard. It's totally fine at this age to be part of the pack. Any age, in fact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My daughter just began 1st grade last week and it's been determined she is reading at a mid 2nd grade level.
She has not been assessed for math yet but she routinely adds 3 digit numbers in her head for fun, like 341 + 287.

I realize that this is not genius-level, but she is only one of two kids in her class so far who is reading above grade level. What should we do for her? Anything? There is no gifted program and the school is not able to provide groups for her with kids at her age on a similar level.

Really? No one else is reading a grade ahead? I find it hard to believe your DD is that much of an outlier at such a small deviation from the norm. Are the rest of the kids all remedial?

I can believe it. In first grade, my reading group was only 3 kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Two of my friends had young children in similar situations, and ended up moving to school districts where they hoped to find more peers for their children. Which they did (Rockville and Bethesda).

Yes, not advocating moving and not to pee on your parade, OP--but, we are in Potomac and when my son was in first last year, I'd guess about 1/3 of his class was reading two grade levels above and most of the rest of the kids were at your daughter's level.

I'm less sure of the math levels, but, your daughter sounds similar to my son and he certainly had peers at school on his level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Two of my friends had young children in similar situations, and ended up moving to school districts where they hoped to find more peers for their children. Which they did (Rockville and Bethesda).

Yes, not advocating moving and not to pee on your parade, OP--but, we are in Potomac and when my son was in first last year, I'd guess about 1/3 of his class was reading two grade levels above and most of the rest of the kids were at your daughter's level.

I'm less sure of the math levels, but, your daughter sounds similar to my son and he certainly had peers at school on his level.

OK, but OP's daughter DOESN'T have peers at her school. This would worry me, because it sounds like all the teacher's time will be spent trying to get half or more of the class up to grade level in reading while OP's daughter spins her wheels. OP, can you put in for a transfer?

[Anonymous]

While being a year ahead in reading in some schools is not considered advanced- it is advanced at this child's school.

We had a situation where our son was advanced in reading and the teacher insisted that he had to complete the first grade reading curriculum even though he was far ahead of it. It was miserable and we moved schools.

I don't have great advice OP if you can't move or work with the teacher- except to supplement at home with good books. We read aloud from advanced books and talked about the themes to grow comprehension.

The math sounds advanced- I supplemented math at home. Not a crazy amount of work, just a bit at night to challenge DS. An advanced math student can go a little nuts at the slow pace of math in early elementary. It was another area where the school would not work with us, unfortunately.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My daughter just began 1st grade last week and it's been determined she is reading at a mid 2nd grade level.
She has not been assessed for math yet but she routinely adds 3 digit numbers in her head for fun, like 341 + 287.

I realize that this is not genius-level, but she is only one of two kids in her class so far who is reading above grade level. What should we do for her? Anything? There is no gifted program and the school is not able to provide groups for her with kids at her age on a similar level. [/quote]

Really? No one else is reading a grade ahead? I find it hard to believe your DD is that much of an outlier at such a small deviation from the norm. Are the rest of the kids all remedial?[/quote]

Yes. We attend a high FARMS high ELL population urban school. [/quote]

So do I and my DS has plenty of peers on his level, which is about a year and a half above level. Everyone isn't remedial because it is a high FARMs/ELL school. In our school, kids go to different classrooms if their homeroom doesn't have a good match for reading groups. My DS, who reads above level, has always remained in his class and had 3-4 kids on his level. My DD, who despite her white non FARM non ELL status reads below level, goes to a different class for reading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2nd grade level isn't that advanced. remember the grade levels are based on a fairly low bar. Make sure she knows all her letter blends and letter sounds. Talk about common prefixes and suffixes. Phonics might not be covered with enough depth at your school. Vocabulary building is helpful for building reading comprehension skills. Look at the Wordly Wise series of workbooks.

I strongly disagree with this advice. The best way to improve your vocabulary is through reading and talking, not through direct vocabulary instruction like workbooks -- especially for beginning readers.

Kids will only get so far learning vocab on their own especially when they are reading harder books then their reading level. This is because they will skip the word all together and not even really try to give it a meaning because they get the general idea from the rest of the sentence and sentences. Often the bigger words they can not even sound out properly in 1 or 2nd grade yet. This is one of the major reasons I saw that kids who were advanced readers in K, 1st, and 2nd leveled off in 3rd. They were at the point that they needed to be able to understand all the words in context.

So yes, the majority of kids are going to need direct vocabulary instruction at some point.

But the point is that it should be in relation to what they are reading. They are called context clues. Wordly Wise teaches vocabulary in isolation. It is not directly connected to what the child is reading. Somehow we managed to learn an extensive vocabulary when I was in school through conversations and something called a dictionary.

As I said before, many times kids will skip the word all together and not even really try to give it a meaning because they get the general idea from the rest of the sentence and sentences. Often the bigger words they can not even sound out properly in 1 or 2nd grade yet. They DO NOT get the meaning of the word from the context, they simply skip the word all together , and get the general context of the story from the larger paragraph. That works ok for shallow reading comprehension like being able to tell who the characters are and the basic plot. As kids get older, they have to be able to derive more meaning from what they are reading. Vocabulary is one of the skills needed for reading comprehension.

[Anonymous]

The public library is your best resource. Use it as often as possible.

Between Common Sense Media, book suggestion threads on DCUM, and the advice of various childrens' librarians across town, you and your DD can find great books to keep her happy and challenged. Just be sure to mix things up. Chapter books with age-appropriate themes, picture books, and non-fiction books are all wonderful and important at that age. Mix things up!

For math, do some searches on DCUM for ideas and resources. Math is much, much more than addition. Consider spatial games and toys, word problems, patterns and number puzzles, YouTube channels like Vi Hart,
Lego robotics programs, and other early STEM /STEAM resources.

The key is to keep things FUN. At this age, there's no need for regimented enrichment routines. Keep it light, expose her to things at home, and follow her interests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter just began 1st grade last week and it's been determined she is reading at a mid 2nd grade level.
She has not been assessed for math yet but she routinely adds 3 digit numbers in her head for fun, like 341 + 287.

I realize that this is not genius-level, but she is only one of two kids in her class so far who is reading above grade level. What should we do for her? Anything? There is no gifted program and the school is not able to provide groups for her with kids at her age on a similar level.

How do you know only 2 kids are at that level? Presumably by "so far" you mean assessments are ongoing...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2nd grade level isn't that advanced. remember the grade levels are based on a fairly low bar. Make sure she knows all her letter blends and letter sounds. Talk about common prefixes and suffixes. Phonics might not be covered with enough depth at your school. Vocabulary building is helpful for building reading comprehension skills. Look at the Wordly Wise series of workbooks.

I strongly disagree with this advice. The best way to improve your vocabulary is through reading and talking, not through direct vocabulary instruction like workbooks -- especially for beginning readers.

Kids will only get so far learning vocab on their own especially when they are reading harder books then their reading level. This is because they will skip the word all together and not even really try to give it a meaning because they get the general idea from the rest of the sentence and sentences. Often the bigger words they can not even sound out properly in 1 or 2nd grade yet. This is one of the major reasons I saw that kids who were advanced readers in K, 1st, and 2nd leveled off in 3rd. They were at the point that they needed to be able to understand all the words in context.

So yes, the majority of kids are going to need direct vocabulary instruction at some point.

But the point is that it should be in relation to what they are reading. They are called context clues. Wordly Wise teaches vocabulary in isolation. It is not directly connected to what the child is reading. Somehow we managed to learn an extensive vocabulary when I was in school through conversations and something called a dictionary.

As I said before, many times kids will skip the word all together and not even really try to give it a meaning because they get the general idea from the rest of the sentence and sentences. Often the bigger words they can not even sound out properly in 1 or 2nd grade yet. They DO NOT get the meaning of the word from the context, they simply skip the word all together , and get the general context of the story from the larger paragraph. That works ok for shallow reading comprehension like being able to tell who the characters are and the basic plot. As kids get older, they have to be able to derive more meaning from what they are reading. Vocabulary is one of the skills needed for reading comprehension.

No one is arguing that point.

[Anonymous]

For her advanced math skills, make sure she is doing things the correct way. My nephew was a bit of a math-wiz and would add numbers in his head but do it backwards which made adding five and six digit numbers more difficult.