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Oct 18, 2016
9:46:24am
jdub All-American
A recommendation for parents with kids struggling to learn to read
My first 4 children didn't struggle with reading at all, in fact they were early readers and took to it like fish to water. But my 5th child just struggled, didn't seem interested. We read to him and with him, worked with flash cards, etc. He was just different. At the end of his first grade year (last year), he was among the lowest group of readers in his class. We were very concerned.

So, over this past summer, in addition to regularly reading with him as we had been, I googled and found a free online reading game called "Teach Your Monster to Read". My boy loved it. He wanted to play it all the time, and we were pretty willing to let him do it regularly.

Well, as I said, we continued the other stuff, and we saw him really take off with it. During scripture reading, we've always had even the non-readers "read" by helping them through it, but he stopped needing as much help. There was some very obvious improvement. Just before the school year, we started him on chapter books (Boxcar Children and A to Z Mysteries), and he has started reading those now just because he wants to (we do continue to prod him that way too).

My wife just met with his 2nd grade teacher last Thursday for a parent-teacher conference. My wife actually got choked up when she told me about it and showed me the assessment. He went from among the lowest at the end of last school year (May of this year), to now 2.5 months into this new year being among the top 5 readers in his whole grade. His teacher was kind of shocked about the transformation as well because she has last year's assessment.

I really credit that silly little online game "Teach Your Monster to Read" for helping turn the light on for him. If any of you are struggling with this same issue, give it a try. Don't just put your kid on it, though, and hope it solves everything. You have to put effort in as parents too. But we saw a quantum leap for my kiddo and I wanted to share.
jdub
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jdub
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