Would you get extra support for this Y2 child?

[Kellamity]

DS is one of the youngest in his year and his achievements reflect this. He loves school, is popular and is continually improving. However he is on green band/level with his reading so he is a little behind and I am wondering if he would benefit from some extra support to boost his reading.

A few mums use a local Kip Mcgrath group and I have spoken to his teacher to see if she thinks this is a good idea for DS. Her initial reaction was to reassure me she is not worried about DS, yes he is a little behind but he is always improving and she feels he will eventually catch up. She is worried that something like Kip McGrath may confuse him especially if they use slightly different methods of teaching.

I really respect her opinion, she is a very experienced teacher who seems to really know DS and I think I am happy with her opinion but I just wondered what you mums netters might do if you were in a similar position.

I would respect what the teacher said and just play lots of word games with him and read a lot with him and do what you have been doing.

An August baby is practically 12 months behind others in the year and at this age can make a huge difference so if the teacher is not worried then I would listen to her.

I agree that Kip McGrath isn't the answer to boost his reading.
What is the teacher doing to help him catch up?

If the teacher has said no to Kip M then respect that.

Instead, sign up to reading chest - they send you books in the post for your DC to read. When my DS was struggling, I signed up to gold subscription. (unlimited books) and we read one book per day. DS started on ORT level 2 red at the start of Y1 and has moved up to ORT level 8 purple (read with ease and ready to move up) now (almost end of Y1). I get the same level from reading chest as the teacher has him on at school. Practice will do wonders for him.

With reading, there is little better IMVHO than choosing books of appropriate difficulty (so use book band guidelines) that interest your child (as far as possible) and reading them with your child, alternating pages if need be.

I needed to do a lot of work on reading at home with DD since we are not in the UK and school would not have taught her to read in English until she was 7. I found the Jelly & Bean series was excellent while she was learning her grapheme-phoneme correspondences and that thereafter the Usborne Young Reading and Young series are really good.

Usborne First Reading and Young Reading

Ds gets one book a week at school which we are asked to read each night in different ways ie. using an expansion sheet giving a more comprehensive story, a page each, asking questions etc. By the 4th night I would often wonder if we wouldn't be better with a new book and, when reading on Mumsnet that some schools change books daily, wondered if I should question this. However now, coming to the end of his first year at school, he is reading green level books with ease and is ready to move on so I would have to say that this method has worked well for him. It would be worth a try!

Do you get him to read to you daily, OP?

Yes he reads every night at home and I've started getting him to read the odd sentence in his bedtime story we read to him. He is keen and I have no doubt he will get there I just hate the thought of him constantly catching up

I looked at the reading chest earlier this week.

Look at the free ebooks at MN learning and Oxfordowl

There is no good reason why a summer born child should constantly be playing catch up. Did he start school with his peers or did he have a staggered entry?

He started in the September on half days until the Xmas.

Were older children full time or were all children half days?

Oldest children full time straight away, next lot half days til autumn half term and youngest half days til Xmas.

So the older children had half a term extra "teaching" time than the youngest

Yes but don't a lot of schools do this? Having said that our school no longer do this. There are a couple of children in his year that are a week short of being a whole year older than him.

yes and disadvantage the youngest pupils

Agree with mrz.

Surely the youngest need all the time they can get in school?

It's one of those difficult decisions ... but if a child has had less "teaching" than their older peers they have more to catch up.

It's tricky. As the youngest in Y2 he's only a tiny bit older than the oldest in Y1, which would make his reading level not so far behind. I would keep up the encouragement, reading each day, and monitor how he does say during the Autumn term of Y3. You may find he suddenly has a leap forward when reading clicks. My nephew did this, he went from being a very reluctant reader, quite behind, to about average in his year within a term. However, I can see you don't want to let him get too far behind so perhaps worth a longer chat with his teacher to see what additional support they can offer or how they are proposing to monitor him/not let him get too behind in Y3.

Just wondering if he is getting good quality phonics based books to read and how he is doing with his phonics? Hard to progress beyond a certain point before a good grounding in phonics.

Ask for more books off the teacher and aim to do 20 mins a day.

www.teachprimary.com/resource_uploads/supporting-struggling-readers.pdf