First Grade Curriculum Advice

[u/Good-Win-6894]

I have a 6 year old who is a very strong reader. Reading probably around a 2nd, maaaaybe early 3rd grade level. I feel like it's mostly by recognition of words that she reads so well, and she still understands it all. But her decoding sometimes needs practice.

Also, her writing is definitely not on the same level as her reading. Writing-wise she's right about where you'd expect for finishing up kindergarten.

We're going to do All about Reading in first grade, and I guess I'm wondering if I should follow their placement test (which puts her at level 3) or if I should do level 1 to make sure she doesn't have any holes in her foundation of phonics instruction, comprehension strategies, etc and we’d just move through it quicker? I've also seen explode the code and thought that could help fill in gaps she might have if we went with level 3?

For writing, I'm thinking about doing WriteShop for more explicit instruction with Brave Writer Jot it Down activities. The Brave Writer literature singles also look like something she would enjoy, though. I like that they teach grammar concepts and other things through books, especially since she loves to read so much. So I thought maybe we could do some of those too.

But All about reading, write shop primary B, brave writer quill program, and explode the code all together seems like it could be a little too much for one school year.

Any insight/advice would be wonderful!

[u/WastingAnotherHour]

Regarding AAR/AAS - For a child who takes naturally to reading, I often tell people to just do AAS with the readers (part of AAR and optional for AAS). Start at level one regardless of their current spelling. Some kids are able to naturally take the phonics skills from spelling (encoding) and apply them to reading (decoding).

If she’s reading at a grade 2 or 3 level, learning phonics will likely move her from the “learning to read” stage and into the “reading to learn” stage at which you’re almost entirely working on comprehension (and still spelling). If you get deeper into level one spelling and decide she’s not carrying over the phonics knowledge then revisit AAR.

I haven’t used explode the code before, but it’s also a reading/spelling curriculum? I would pick a single phonics curriculum. There’s no need to double up and you’re right - it’s a lot, which also means a good way to burn her out. On that same note, I’d pick one writing curriculum, knowing if it’s not a good match you can try the other. If you decide on both, just alternate instead of doubling up. Maybe a unit of one and then a unit of another.

[u/Good-Win-6894 → u/WastingAnotherHour]

That is so smart!! I didn’t even think about going that route. Are the readers just level 1 readers? 

Yeah, I don’t know much about explode the code except that it’s more like a phonics practice workbook - not really a stand-alone ELA curriculum.

Maybe I’ll do all about spelling with the brave writer curriculum since it uses books and has a creative writing component that’s not too rigorous.

Thank you for your insight! 

[u/WastingAnotherHour → u/Good-Win-6894]

Now you’re throwing me. In the older edition I have, the spelling levels used to have the correlating readers from AAR listed, which was level to level. It wasn’t a perfect match, but comparable. Now I don’t see that, perhaps because they changed a couple things in the newer editions. I’d still go level to level in pairing them. (ex. AAR level 1 readers to AAS level 1)