What happens AFTER Bigger with ERs...

[farmfamily]

My daughter will be 8 in June. We are on Unit 22 in Bigger and she is near the end of the ERs, (Bears on Hemlock Mountain - she loves it!). I find she still needs help reading several words per page.

If your child did the ERs in Bigger - did he/she need to slow down in Preparing or CTC to work on reading skills?

I am sure that when we hit Preparing in the fall I will want her to read aloud to me the history and science independent readings (is that what others do?) She has a tendency to guess and move on when it comes to difficult words.

[Mumkins]

Maybe look at the books in DITHOR and have her read those aloud to you for the rest of the year, after she finishes the ERs, and over the summer? Then you could reevaluate if you still need her to read outloud in Preparing. If you're doing DITHOR in the fall, they do have the child read out loud quite a bit too.

[StephanieU]

Yes, DITHOR is what comes after ERs. The Level 2 DITHOR books are at the same level as the last ER book, and it is scheduled so they read aloud to you most of the time through the 2/3 book. Then you just work through DITHOR, bumping up the book level and student workbook level as needed.

[MelInKansas]

To answer one of your other questions, I do not have my daughter read the independent reading aloud to me, but we do go back and look over it if her narration or answers to the questions don't seem very thorough or correct. She does read aloud to me in DITHR and I plan to continue that. DITHR is intended to be the reading program after you finish the ER set. With an 8 year old you may need to help a lot with the assignments in the workbook, and that is normal, many people do that for a while. Now that my DD is 9 and in Preparing she is doing them mostly on her own, with some help from me when she wants to write words she doesn't know how to spell. There is lots of interaction with you also in discussing the character traits and story elements. Some put off starting DITHR after ER but you don't need to you can start it right away.

[farmfamily]

I think I didn't phrase my question very well here. I know about DITHR. What I was trying to do was ask: if your child did the ERs in Bigger (I.e. was only an emerging reader and not very confident), how did they do in later guides with the independent reading required & was it necessary to slow down?

My older Dd9 did all her reading for school aloud to me until she was 8 1/2, and her reading skills were much better than her sister's (her reading at age 6 was better than my dd7 (almost 8 now). I worry that if I encourage my younger dd to independently read history/science material that she will not learn as much as she should, and she will develop bad habits with her reading - i.e. skipping over or guessing on harder words (she already does this).

I think I am probably going to need to slow her down in Preparing and so perhaps should uncombine her from dd9.

[Gwenny]

The reading they are supposed to do on their own is pretty short and not very difficult. I think it gradually increases as the year goes on-a little. Carrie has done an awesome job of slowly increases their skills over the guides to prepare them for the next guide. That said, you daughter in on the younger end and maybe needs a little more time to catch up. You could have her read them to you at first just to see how she does, but I bet you can drop that off pretty quickly. As far as un-combining, that is an option as well. My daughter is on the older end of the guides and she is almost done with Preparing. She reads all of the guide herself, I don't do any of it. It is really nice, she likes that and it sure helps me because I'm stretched to the max with my time. You could let your older daughter take off and you could slow down the younger a little and her skills will improve and she can be more on her own a little later.

[TrueGRIT]

I find that it varies from child to child. We did need to slow down a little in Preparing on the reading. My son is mildly dyslexic, so he will take longer. If your daughter is not, then I think a short time of going slower will be sufficient for her. With my second he will be finishing the ER's in Bigger, and I plan to have him go slower to begin in Preparing, but then I think he will quickly catch-up. As I'm sure your daughter will as well.