Reading Aaron

Aaron has improved markedly in his letter recognition and reading ability, but he's still pretty shaky compared to when Jada was his age.  He's particularly good at sounding out simple three-sound words, like "hat" and "book," since it's not hard for him to figure out the beginning, middle, and end sound and then put them together.  And he's good at using pictures as clues: if there's a picture of a dog, he knows which word is "dog" when he gets to it.

Where he's not so good is with more complicated sounds and words, like "sweet" (he tries to sound out "s" and "w" instead of "sw") or "rough" (sounding that out isn't going to get you anywhere).  He's rarely ever able to take the meaning from the other words in a sentence to narrow down what the next word might be (if you're reading "John's at the store.  Where is he?" being able to figure out the word "where" comes in part from knowing what kind of question might be being asked).  And even after he's read a word ten times in short succession (I have him reading a bunch of easy, repetitive stories), he still tries to sound it out (how many times have I said to him, "Aaron, we just read this word, so you know it and don't have to sound it out from scratch").

All of that said, he's still at or slightly above average for his grade level.  So we'll take the progress and keep banging away on him so he can get even better.