Bath, it doesn't seem consistent that his spelling words are what they are if they aren't happy with his level of reading. When my DD1 was in year 1 last year, she had words like that on her spelling list because she was more than able to spell them - but they had ability graded groups so you had the top % of students doing the harder words like my DD was, then you had the middle % of students and then you had the bottom group of kids who were spelling words that were at most 5 letters long. Maybe ask for a revision of his spelling word list as well just so there is consistency, but if fluency is his main issue then I agree that it is something that will come with time and practice but it is also a catch 22 situation because to get them to develop fluency, you have to practice with them to show them how otherwise they can stay a bit stilted. What I do with DD2 is get her to read it first, so it's like "the. cat. sat. on. the. mat." and when they read like that, they do tend to lose a bit of the meaning of what it is they are reading and then when she is finished, I read the sentence too so it's "the cat sat on the mat" and then she is able to read it like that herself. We have our readers for 1 week, and we will read them both each night, building up each time so by the end of the week she is reading the book fluently. The more the read the same book, the easier it is for them to become fluent. If we have ever had a book that she's struggled with, I write a note in her reading log saying we'd like to keep that one for another week, otherwise they have to start all over again with a new book kwim?

I am constantly stunned too at what our kids have to learn compared to what I learnt at the same stage of school but then I have noticed a difference in 5 years, so I imagine that from when your DD started (10 years ago?) that the difference would have been bigger still and not so much a reflection of private v public. During an information night a few years ago that I went to at the school they said that the Reading Recovery program is funded separately so the places are usually highly sought after so if they think that he needs it, then they have probably done a lot of consideration and assessing to determine that and it may only be for this year. One thing I noticed too is that they will all of a sudden have a big leap forward. I remember with DS1, he started year 1 on level 7, but before the end of the first term he was on a level 14. I spoke with his teacher about it and she said that it just *clicked* for him and it became so much easier so your DS may be like that too. Oh and another thing, they only benchmark them for their reading ability once a term, so they might wallow around on the lower levels for a bit and you think they aren't getting anywhere, but when they do the benchmarking he may have jumped ahead several levels at once.