Wakato Academy

Homeschooling Reflections...

This past week I have been doing a lot of reflecting on the past year and looking to the future and as I sat here thinking about all that we accomplished I realized that I had learned a few very valuable lessons about reading this past year.  My son is turning 9 in just a few months and he reads at a 5th or 6th grade level, but last year on his 8th birthday he was struggling with simple words and I was getting worried.  We had worked through all the phonics rules, he knew the "how to" of how to read he just couldn't get past the sounding out everything.  Amazingly he understood everything he did manage to read, comprehension was definatly not the problem, fluency was the problem.  So I set in motion a plan to build his fluency, he read 3x a day to me.  Nothing, nothing and more nothing....  Then for christmas I got this great idea to go buy him a chapter book one I knew he would love.  It wasn't classical literature or anything, Ricky Ricotta and His Mighty Robot, but I knew he would love the book.  As I expected he loved it, it was actually a compilation of 3 stories.  He started reading it that night when he went to bed, I still to this day don't know what time the lights went out that night but I suspect it was somewhere around 2 or 3 am.  Three days latter he finally but the book down, announcing that he had finished the book and proceeding to talk non-stop about it.  That was the end of my worring and the start of a very important realization for me about my son and his learning. 

"He is where he is because thats where he needs to be"

You see I was always worried about the fact that he was behind.  I mean here was a boy who would be in 2nd grade in public school reading at what was considered in the public school a first grade level.  While at the same time within less than a month he went from reading at a first grade level to a 3rd grade level and 6 months latter reads at a 5th to 6th grade level. 

You see he was exactly where HE needed to be when HE needed to be there, the trick for me was being where HE needed me to be when HE needed me to be there.

You see I had always heard the old addage your not behind, just jump in where you are but until this last year it just never sunk in.  I mean if he wasn't average or above average than I was failing right?  Wrong! Failing would have been failing to recognize where he needed me to be when he needed me to be there, failing would have been giving up and not taking time to see what he really needed from me. 

So what does this mean for the future.  Well, as I started planning for the next year and thinking about where we were and where were going I started in on the same old, same old mantra...he's behind in ________.  This year its his writing that has me worried.  But this year its a bit different because this year I know that he is where he is becuase he needs to be there.  I know that as I plan what to do to encourage his writing that he will take off when he is ready to take off and that my only job is to keep it available and fun.