Anonymous wrote:I would just say as the parent of older (college aged) kids...don't get too excited either way about your kindergartener's reading ability. Two of our kids were reading at the 2nd ant 3rd grade levels in kindergarten. They graduated from high school as good, but not great students. Another one of our children had absolutely no interest at all in reading. She was definitely not reading in kindergarten. She wasn't really reading on level until second grade. She graduated from high school a National Merit Scholar. Her ACT and SAT scores were insanely nigh. And she is a sophomore in college on a full academic scholarship. Even as a very young toddler, she loved books. She loved to be read to. She loved to look at books. She just had no interest in learning to read until she got older.

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Anonymous wrote:My son isn't at the point of sounding out words on a page, but can tell you which word is which in a title or in a page, so he has basic phonics awareness. I would hesitate to say that he isn't "reading" yet, though. He is working on other important reading skills such as predicting, making personal connections, and retelling. It seems that we get so caught up in this idea that a child

I'm not sure what this means if he isn't sounding out the words - that he knows sight words?

Anonymous wrote:Second grade level at the start of K. DC was very determined to learn to read and loves reading. I read nothing into it other than the fact that DC is very determined.

Anonymous wrote:About like yours, OP. She can read a whole level 1 book, with help. The caveat-- she always scrutinizes the picture on a page before she starts reading. When she encounters a word she doesn't know, she tries to guess based on the picture, rather than looking at the letters and sounding it out. This annoys me, and makes me wonder how much she's really "reading", versus recognizing sight words and guessing.

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Anonymous wrote:I just find it hard to believe that the majority of kids start Kindergarten "reading". I think people define "reading" in different ways though. Some people say their kids are reading when they can sound out a few simple words and some mean their kids can independently read a book. I can tell you that my five year old is absolutely not reading - not sounding out words. I hope she isn't too much of an outlier. I've been told by many that learning to read happens at different ages for all kids and they all seem to catch up to one another by third grade. We'll see if that's true in our case.

OP here. True, I don't know how people are defining it. I'm going by what other parents are saying. The head of school told us that they expect kids to make progress from their initial starting point, but that they don't expect all kids to be able to fully read by the end of kindergarten. Her own child wasn't reading fluently until the end of 2nd grade, when it suddenly just clicked. And now she never stops. There must be a huge variation on skill development. I just don't know how to identify potential problems. My brother could read in 3rd grade, but had no ability to comprehend what he was reading. That's my biggest concern, although it seems to me my son has a clue about what he's reading and relates to it.

Anonymous wrote:About like yours, OP. She can read a whole level 1 book, with help. The caveat-- she always scrutinizes the picture on a page before she starts reading. When she encounters a word she doesn't know, she tries to guess based on the picture, rather than looking at the letters and sounding it out. This annoys me, and makes me wonder how much she's really "reading", versus recognizing sight words and guessing.