DD7's class was so different in that the teacher did not even read to the class and they only covered 1 chapter book for her book club the entire spring semester. I feel there was just no focus on reading for DD. The teacher just did not care.
DD7 reads some outside of school and when she reads she doesn't seem to struggle with words, but I feel that the problem lies in the fact that she still seems stuck on the same level of books as last year and is having trouble transitioning to books without pictures. At the end of Kindergarten she was reading Magic Treehouse, A to Z Mysteries, and Geronimo Stilton. I feel all of these gave her the 99% score.
Now I need for her to move up a bit more but it's challenging because the books lose all the pictures and plain text is not as exciting for her. Because her teacher never read these types of books to the class, DD had no one to model after (is very important for DD as she models who she's around) and she is losing focus on books. We are spending this summer trying to transition to books without pictures and find ones DD can be interested in.
A few thoughts for you - the first is that we were always told by our early elementary school teachers that the very best thing we could do at home to help our children develop their reading skills was to read out loud *to* them - even when they are in upper elementary. So if your dd is having trouble transitioning to non-picture books, I'd read from books you enjoy to her.
Second thing to just watch out for - not likely or expected, but something that could be happening is that you might have a very bright young child who has a reading-related challenge. My youngest dd started out reading as if she would be way ahead - and she was way ahead of grade level in kindergarten and at the beginning of first, but she stopped progressing rapidly by the end of first and other readers were catching up with her, then by second it was clear she wasn't keeping up in terms of progress and by the end of 2nd she was right at grade level. By the beginning of third she'd fallen behind level, and was diagnosed with an LD that impacts her ability to associate sight and sound. There was no way we saw that in her early reading development because her other intellectual strengths made it possible for her to compensate.
Last thing - I don't put a lot of stock in percentiles re reading in K-2 grade, simply because a lot of very able children learn to read at very different ages. My ds was assessed as being behind grade level when he was 5 1/2 and was reading high school level chapter books by the time he was in first grade. His best buddy was struggling with reading even simple sight words at the end of first but was reading really well and above grade level when he started back to school in the all for first grade - all without any parental or tutoring help over the summer. Two things I take away from watching my kids and so many others learn to read - the kids who are the top readers in the first two years of school aren't necessarily the top readers a few years later - not because they've lost ground, but because other kids who started reading later catch up. If everyone started reading at exactly the same point in time, then (and really only then) I'd expect a child's reading growth in early elementary to have similar percentiles across time if he/she is learning steadily. So, in the case of an early elementary student, a drop from 99th to 96th percentile wouldn't worry me too much - especially if you felt that part of the issue was being in a classroom where reading wasn't emphasized.
Have fun reading over the summer!
polarbear
