While my daughter scores highly on tests, I'm pretty happy with where her placement in school. Between what we do at home and what she does in school, I think she's fine and doesn't need any extreme differentiation in all areas except for reading.

Reading is a different story. She is in kindergarten but reads on about a fourth grade level. At the beginning of the year the teacher sent home guided reading packets that gave tips for reading at home that involved everything from asking questions to techniques to sound out words. Obviously, this does not work for my daughter unless she's reading books with words that she hasn't seen before. To solve the problem, my daughter doesn't have a guided reading group. Instead she picks out her own books and fills out a reader's report after each one that the teacher grades.

The same thing happened to me. Basically, the sent me to the library for three years to read on my own. And in that three years there was a lot of learning that I lost--things I really needed to be in the classroom for. I'm determined to not have that happen to her.

I have her read the books out loud to me. We use the reading strategies on any words she mispronounces (sometimes they work, sometimes they don't). We work on punctuation--she still frequently runs over periods. We stop so I can ask her questions to check comprehension. And she tends to read very quietly, like mumbling. I make her stop and read with feeling, which helps with punctuation and volume, but is endlessly annoying to her. Note: this process is for this guided reading thing. She can read whatever she wants on her own for pleasure.

I'm hoping for tips on how to teach the same things they're learning in kindergarten at this different level.

Problems I'm running into:

1) It makes sense that she wants to mumble quietly instead of reading entire novels out loud, but I need to hear the words. Are there better ways to accomplish this? There are some words she misses, and while they don't affect comprehension, she is learning to skip words if we don't do this. Also, she reads too fast if she isn't reading out loud at a slow pace.

2) I stop to check comprehension. There are concepts which she needs to be introduced to. For instance yesterday, the characters were talking about something being "on the nose." One book made references to Sherlock Holmes. But she gets annoyed when we stop because she wants the story. Am I doing right by stopping? Even if we wait until the end of the chapter, she doesn't want to sit around talking, she wants to read the next chapter.

3) Punctuation: she runs over it. Are there techniques to help them with punctuation that doesn't involve stopping so frequently?

Thanks for any advice you can give. I really want her to get the benefit of learning the same things that the kids that don't read at her level are getting, but I need more clues as to what I should be doing differently. Books to read, warnings, things for me to consider are all welcome.