Reprinted from Perpectives, winter 2006, The International Dyslexia Association
How Do I Know If My Child is Making Progress in
Sandie Barrie Blackley, MA/CCC
Beginning with the end in mind, I like to ask parents about their goals for their child. Most say that they want their child’ to love reading’,’ to be a reader’, and ‘to go to college’. Such responses suggest that parents’ goals typically go far beyond the goals of the typical public school. Naturally, schools have a more short-term, micro view of student goals than do parents. To track the child’s language-literacy growth, parents need to combine observations from home with information from the schools – and other helping professionals (reading teacher, psychologist, speech-language pathologist). Persistence is generally required, but the effort is usually worth it.
Following are some suggestions for using home observations to track your child’s language-literacy growth.
What to Measure
The number of minutes your child spends each day in out of school reading.
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Count the minutes that the child spends being read to and the time he/she spends reading alone or reading aloud. |
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All types of text |
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Don’t count if media (TV, radio, computer, etc) is playing in the background. |
Your child’s attitude toward reading
The percentage of words your child reads correctly on the first try
The number of correct words the child reads in one minute
Why it is
Important?
The daily volume of reading (including being read to) is both a major cause as well as an effect of language-literacy and cognitive growth.
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It is important to turn off electronic media and reduce background noise because these can disrupt attention and comprehension. The child may be unconsciously attending more to the media than to the reading. Establish home rules limiting the electronic media that competes with reading (TV, radio, i-Pods, etc.). |
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Over the months and years, and as the student’s literacy skills advance, there should be slow, steady growth in the volume of time spent in out of school reading. |
People general avoid difficult and unpleasant activities. To become a daily habit, reading must be rewarding and pleasant.
To read text independently students need to read at least 97% of the words accurately on the first try. If accuracy is 93% or less the child is likely to be frustrated.
Students who read very slowly, even if they read fairly accurately, have a hard time comprehending meaning from the text.
When, Where and
How to Measure
Just before going to bed each evening, write on a calendar or chart your estimate of the number of minutes your child spent in out of school reading that day.
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At the end of each month add up the minutes for all the days and divide by the number of days to get an average number of minutes per day for that month. Keep this tally month-to-month. |
Make daily notes on a calendar or chart about your child’s mood and attitude while reading. If he/she seems consistently unhappy, inattentive, and/or under stress when reading, seek guidance from a reading specialist.
Listen to your child read aloud for one minute. Keep a tally of ‘trouble words’ on a piece of scrap paper (all words that he/she didn’t read correctly on the first try, within about 1 second, or needed your help with). When a minute is up draw a line after the last word you child read. Count all the words in the passage. Using your tally, subtract the number of ‘trouble words’ from the total to get the number of correct words read. Divide the number of correct words by the number of total words to get a percentage of correct words.
From the information you collected above, you have the number of correct words your child read in one minute (CWM)
Approximate expected reading rates are as follow (for the end of each year)
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1st grade: 40-60 CW/M |
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2nd grade: 80-100 CW/M |
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3rd grade: 100-120 CW/M |
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4th grade and above: 120-180 CW/M |
References:
Cunningham, A. E. and Stanovich, K. (Summer, 1998) What
http://www.aft.org/pubsreports/american_educator/spring_sum98/index.html
Levinson, B.S. (2005). Helping Parents of Children with
Dyslexia. In J. R. Birsh (Ed.) (2005), Multisensory
Teaching of Basic Language Skills, 2nd Edition, Chapter 20, pp.
535-559.
Williams, B. T. (2004, May). “A Puzzle to the Rest of Us”: Who is a “reader” anyway? [Literacy & Identity department] Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 47(8). Retrieved 12-1-05: