To best help your child, you should know which literacy skills they are having trouble learning.
Is it their fluency or comprehension? Are they still having trouble decoding words? Or is it a lack of background knowledge and vocabulary? As we saw, there are different reasons a child may have trouble.
How to find out:
Ask the teacher. Schedule a meeting or phone call and ask what parts of literacy are challenging for your child.
Some questions to ask:
- Is my child struggling with fluency, comprehension or both? What skills do they need to work on?
- What is my child's independent reading level? (This can help you pick the right books to read at home.)
- Is my child reading grade-level texts in class? (If not, ask what support they are giving your child to help them build up to this.)
- How are you measuring reading progress? How often should I expect updates? (Ask them to look at your child's assessments with you.)
- What topics are you covering in class? (You can talk to your child about the topics to improve background knowledge and vocabulary.)
- How can I help my child at home?
Look at the assessments
The regular assessments they do in school should help the teacher know where your child needs more help. Ask about these assessments, make sure you understand what they say about your child's progress, and keep checking on them every couple weeks.
There are different kinds, but the Curriculum-based Assessments are the immediate snapshots of how your child is doing with the lessons in their class at any given time. The teacher will do these from week to week and can tell if a child is not keeping up. These are the ones to ask about regularly.
See the section in the menu (above) about identifying a learning challenge.