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I agree with the posters that your D needs to be assessed by a specialist to get a handle on the problem. It could be any number of things from vision issues, learning disabilities, ADD, and a multitude of other labels. It could also be a combination of all of these things, or none of them.
It seems to me your daughter has a lot going for her as she is enjoying reading at the more elementary levels, and she is really only in first grade. I've always had a problem with some schools' "watch that first step" situation. They don't teach kids to read in kindergarten and stress that this is totally unnecessary. Then all of a sudden, in first grade, nearly every kid in the class is reading chapter books except for your kid and a handful of others sent to the reading specialist! What the heck did I miss here? That is the modus operandi of a number of schools I know, public and private. Our neighbors who are husband/wife physicians were just fuming about this with their daughter, and their kids go to a very highly regarded Jewish school. No reading taught in Kindergarten, and this is told to the parents upfront because they don't want to hear about this. But all of a sudden in 1st grade, everyone is reading. My neighbors felt that they had to hire a tutor this summer (they were aware of this situation as this is their third child through this system), but they were quite resentful of the way this school operates. A lot of this is because parents start teaching the kids to read regardless of what the school says, so that when the reading books are cracked open, many of the kids are already way ahead. I was blind sided this way myself since I believed what the teachers were saying to me, and ended up having to work with my oldest son as he too was not reading until he was about 7 and a half years of age. Had I known that everyone in first grade would be reading at that level, I would have told the preschool-K teachers to go jump in a lake and pushed him to learn to read. And invested in those Doman flashcards that everyone seemed to be using when he was a toddler. But I can also tell you that I have one who really was still on level 1 type readers until he was 8, and another who was a poor reader up until he was 9 and a half, but both picked up and really moved after a point. Both are strong readers now--S1 graduated college this past year, and S5 is in 5th grade and makes 2nd honor roll, and reads well beyond his grade level. I believe the younger one has some learning issues, but after many assessments from many specialists no one can pinpoint his problems other than he is slow developmentally, but appears to be on a normal or even slightly accelerated learning curve. I probably should have put him back a year, but this school really did not feel this was necessary. Some vision issues were discovered, among other things, and he does wear glasses now. Reading out loud is a problem because he has a stutter. But he is working his way slowly up the aptitude chart, jumping 10 points each year, and he hit the 75th %tile last year. Because of a number of other issues that he had as a toddler, we really did not worry too much about the slowness, and he looks like he has made really good progress. And the reason he is in a private school is because he is not labeled and pulled out here as he would be in the public school.
The other curious thing about our public school is that it seems that about 65% of the 1st graders read at about a 2nd-3rd grade level---at the beginning of first grade, but the kids who graduate are not a lot to brag about given the socio economics of the area. The average SAT1 is below the national average (yes, just slighlly), but more incredibly there are not many kids in the higher echelons .
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