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TargetMaleficent t1_jdvdbnw wrote

I work for a reading tutoring company and I can assure you public schools do not expect every child to be reading novels in Kinder lol. Instruction in K-1 focuses mostly on letter-sound correspondence, phonics, sight words, and spelling .

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DuxBellorumUthred OP t1_jdvf08d wrote

In all fairness I will admit I was exaggerating when I said that. That said, my son's neighborhood friend is in the same grade as he is and is in public school and she does struggle with reading to the point where the school required them to get a tutor because she was not meeting their "milestones" for reading.

I also struggled with reading until I was in high school and it just took the right book at the right time for me like it did my son. (For me it was Dean Koontz' Fear Nothing audiobook on a two day drive to New Mexico, for my son it was Peter Brown's The Wild Robot.)

My wife and I are big proponents of not adhering to arbitrary developmental milestones and letting our child develop at their own pace because every child is different and forcing children into tutoring and into learning things when they are not ready does more often than not will instill resentment of something rather than the love of something. I remember this was a problem for me in school.

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TargetMaleficent t1_jdxrs5k wrote

100% agree about not forcing, but you can gently encourage and expose kids to a wide variety of books to see what motivates them. Sounds like this is what you guys did and I'm glad it works out. I think we book lovers sometimes forget that we don't actually love ALL books, on the contrary its really specific authors and genres that are responsible for our motivation. It can be very difficult for kids to find the joy of reading when they are limited to graded readers and other phony school books.

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Worldly_Narwhal_4452 t1_jdxgzuz wrote

This is a bit off topic, but I’m a reading tutor as well. I’ve had lot of success with high school/college kids, but I just got my first 1st grader last week. As you can imagine, I don’t really know too much about teaching little kids. He has trouble with all of the things you listed, and cannot read at even a kindergarten level. How do you recommend teaching these things?

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aculady t1_jdz92jv wrote

Check out Orton-Gillingham method. It's the most evidence-based way we have to teach reading to dyslexic people.

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TargetMaleficent t1_jdxsz97 wrote

Struggling readers at 1st are often lacking in both sight words and confidence. Find easy books where he can read some parts, like Piggie and Gerald books. Read the same book over and over so he can memorize it. Quickly help him out with any word over 4 letters. School generally does a good job teaching the phonics and spelling, but schools typically can't provide students with enough time spent actually reading and learning sight words. As a result many kids in K-2 struggle with words that don't "follow the rules".

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