Kumon

I have run out of ways to help Troy progress in his reading. I feel like his progress has stalled. We’re still reading together every day, but he seems content to struggle through sounding words out rather than challenging himself to memorize the vocabulary, so he can recognize words by sight. So, we decided to take him to Kumon for help. Several of his friends had used this place as a bridge between preschool and kindergarten with success, and we’re hoping that Troy will get the help he needs too. At the very least maybe they can find a new way to keep him motivated and moving forward. Today was his first day, so I guess we’ll see how it goes.

UPDATE: So, the plan is apparently to take two steps back to take one step forward. They step back to build his confidence and strength in more foundational areas, so he doesn't get discouraged when tackling more advanced areas. He'll go to Kumon twice a week, so he has an instructor to explain how things work and guide him on what they're looking for. The rest of the week, he'll be sent homework activities through the iPad to work on at home and reinforce what they discussed in the facility.

Since he was already going, we decided to sign him up for Math as well. At the very least, we were hoping to get him ahead of schedule on the Math, so that it's one less thing for him to worry about. The focus in Math is for him to get to a point where he can recognize common problems like 2+3 or 6+4 on sight and know the answer without having to count it out in his head. The idea is that having these foundational things being muscle memory will better prepare him for advanced Maths like Algebra later on. This is not how they approach it in school, where it's not important how you arrive at the answer as long as you get the correct answer. They also don't care as much in school, because technology is so readily available to assist you.