After the end of year school testing, which is not permitted to go past 2.0 (gr 2, 0 months), I ponied up the $20 and had her do the DORA.
Oh man, that is some USEFUL information. She's finishing K, starting first next year.
Maxed out: high frequency words and phonemic awareness
Mid 6th grade: Word recognition (decoding, basically)
mid 3rd: oral vocab
low 3rd: reading comprehension
high 1st: spelling
ROFLOL!!!! I don't think the K teacher's advice to just let her read whatever she's comfortable reading is really the right thing to do. She will sit down with a 4th grade book and be riveted and enjoy herself. But when I ask her after this test, she is skimming over a lot of words she doesn't know, and just inferring their meaning from context.
It looks like she can decode anything she sees, but that she needs to be doing a whole lot more value added stuff, like talking about words she doesn't know the meaning of, thinking about what she's reading, maybe throw in some spelling rules, too? I showed her the -ing rule yesterday and she got it in under two minutes.
Would you think that we could consider the mechanics of reading a done deal, and that we're dealing with an early third grade reader and use techniques/expectations aimed for them? Any ideas on techniques and expectations for that level?
Opinions, experience, anyone?
