How to Know if Your Student is in Need of Reading Remediation

We love classical and liberal arts education and those who answer the call to teach in these special schools. The classical model offers students an opportunity to become articulate, mature and curious adults and the future is looking bright knowing that classical schools are sprouting up all over the country.

One small drawback of a classical education, however, is that these amazing, passionate and brilliant teachers are often not equipped to spot potential learning disabilities. I often get messages from parents saying that the teacher is telling them that everything is fine but the parents are sensing that something isn't quite right. So... Who is actually correct?

In short, it depends. 

In my opinion, there are cases in which schools have unrealistic and non-developmental expectations on their students. This can lead to frustration for the students when often the issue is maturity rather than a learning issue. On the flip side, sometimes parents have unrealistic expectations for their children. They send them to $20,000/year preschool, load their schedules up with tutors, and force quick progress in the hopes it will increase their child's admission to Harvard one day.

In both scenarios, it's important to realize that we are speaking about children (as opposed to robots) here. Things like play, fine and gross motor skills and social interaction are immeasurably essential to student success. 

However, there is a fine line between letting kids be kids and getting on the right side of learning issues. In general, I like to use the following formula to gauge if remediation is something parents should consider. I'll note that many states' standards differ but in general, these tend to work close to universally.

End of Kindergarten:

By the end of kindergarten, students should be able to identify all uppercase and lowercase letters and sounds. They should also be able to accurately read and spell CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, identify and produce rhyming words and blend three phonemes into words (i.e. c+a+t = cat)

End of First Grade:

By the end of first grade, students should be able to not only identify all of the items I mentioned from Kindergarten, but also be able to accurately spell and write CVCe words, differentiate between long and short vowel sounds and blend four and five phonemes into words. Students should also be able to construct grammatically correct sentences.

End of Second Grade:

By the end of second grade, students should be able to spell and read CVVC words, begin reading basic chapter books and still blend five phonemes into words. They should also be able to write basic paragraphs using correct sentence structure.

Third Grade and Up:

By the end of third grade, students should be able to read on-level books fluently (with expression) and accurately answer both explicit and inferential thinking questions. They should also consistently read and spell more complex vowel patterns such as r-influenced vowels, dipthongs and ambiguous vowels (i.e. /oi/ in "broil" and /al/  in "always"), and complex consonant clusters (i.e. -dge in "lodge"). 

Final Thoughts

The last thing any educator wants to do is stifle a love of learning and both too much and too little help can do just that. When considering remediation for your child, there are many things to consider and I hope this loose formula was helpful!