The Public Primary School Reader (book) System In Victoria. Hmmmm

[Bathsheba]

Thanks again Trillian Yes, when the Reading Recovery lady rang and spoke to me she mentioned that being on the program was "like winning lotto!". I thought that was a strange way to describe it... but if you say it's highly sought after... but by whom? Parents? Class teachers? If it's separately funded does that mean they don't automatically run it if there is no student in need of it? I was wondering if in our case they just put my son on the program because compared to his peers he was reading in the least fluent manner... but we live in a faily advantaged area... kids would generally be reading well above the state average anyhow... so what's the benchmark? I'd hazard a guess that DS would be top of the class if you compared him to the kids in less advantaged suburbs... shouldn't the funding go there?

The Reading recovery lady gives Ds his spelling words. She writes them in the back of the communication book we need to write in every night. He also has to construct a sentence and do extra activities like write a list of words that contain a silent letter.... eg lamb, knight, autumn etc. So essentially we have to do substantially more homework each night than the other children in his class. It's a lot to manage when i have a 4yo who likes to be involved too. But the Reading recovery lady didn't seem to understand how hard it can be to do homework with one child when you have other children in the house. My husband simply shouldn't work such long hours... or I should be able to tuck my 4yo off into bed or something... apparently grrrrr.

I suspect that reading fluently will just click with DS too. He is a bright child in every other regard.... it just dismays me that he now has this label as being a weak reader when personally I think he is going to be an excellent reader... he shows all the signs if you know what to look for. This is a child that will take himself off to his room and translate a photo of a train into a drawn diagram of his own. The attention to detail is amazing... and he does it often... but mention this to the school teachers and they say 'oh, ok... but when he reads more fluently...." (ie basically dismiss it). Makes me wonder if i really want to get caught up in a system by training to be a teacher when everything just seems so prescriptive... "this is how you teach a child to read... there is only one way... and it's OUR way". All the talk about multiple intelligences and learning styles is just that... talk! This school doesn't walk the talk like my DDs school did. And now I'm rambling....

ETA: oh and thanks PB yep.... I do something similar... read a page after DS has read it just to let him compare fluency... but sometimes it does seem to dismay him. He has a bit of my perfectionist's streak. But then again i also suspect it's tiredness.

[Trillian]

I will scan the benchmarking sheet that DS had to do and also the Johnsons word list that DD1 did - both while in year 1. It will give you an idea of how they assess them. What the teacher talking about the reading recovery program said was that no parent should feel bad if their child gets selected for it because they get more 1 on 1 time with the teacher to help them with their problems as opposed to staying in a group of children all needing help from the 1 teacher kwim? I don't know about the specifics of the funding arrangement though. I had a google and found this info (bearing in mind it is for NSW) Reading Recovery