My son is age wise going in to 4th grade next year.
We have homeschooled him from K-3rd. He has struggled a LOT with reading and writing and still does.
He will be going to school next year.
I personally think we should put him in 3rd next year, but DH is adament that he start out in 4th and be moved only if necessary.
I am working with him a LOT over the summer, but I think for his self esteem it would be much better to just start out in 3rd.
Here is my assessment so far:
1. He can read Magic Treehouse books but it is SLOW!
2. He can write 5 sentence paragraphs, but not an essay or anything.
3. His comprehension skills are very high
4. His math and science are fine.
Anyone with a 3rd grader (esp. of boys) or a 3rd grade teacher who can give feedback?????
Thank you!
We are in the exact same situation with DS. He will be returning to school in the fall, after being homeschooled for the last 2 years, and while he would be a 4th grader age-wise, we have opted to enroll him as a 3rd grader. It wasn't an easy call to make and my DH had the same POV as yours, but after talking to the teachers he'd have in the fall (in both grades) and his reading specialist, and talking to DS himself about it, we decided that 3rd would be a better fit.
Our reasoning:
DS really struggled with school in K & 1st, to the point of actually getting physically ill or having crying fits over not wanting to go. This is what led us to homeschooling in the first place, and given his past experience, we're very concerned about his perception of his return to public school. We don't want to toss him back in to struggle for another year.
In addition to that, he was dx'd as dyslexic last year, and even though we've been working with him at home as well as taking him for one-on-one sessions with a specialist, he isn't quite up to 4th grade level. This was probably a big part of his dislike of school, because he had two teachers in a row who missed the signs of dyslexia and instead treated his frustrated acting-out as a discipline/attention issue.
And finally, 3rd grade is a huge year, skills-wise. 2nd graders in our district are expected to read, analyze what they read on a basic level and be able to identify the elements of a story (fiction vs non, plot/characters/setting, etc). In 3rd grade, they spend much of the year on the 5 paragraph essay, learning book report writing, and other pretty specific writing skills. They are expected to come into 4th knowing how to write book reports, research papers, and personal essays. While DS is making great strides and can do some of those things, he's not quite to doing them independantly. Add in the absence of the tools he uses at home (mainly the computer, because handwriting is still difficult for him and he still reverses letters, so we found he "gets" language arts better if i he lessons aren't so intertwined with the mechanics of handwriting), and we didn't think he'd be up to the demands of writing on a 4th grade level.
We didn't even talk other subjects into consideration, because he's working with a 5th grade math curriculum and is a sponge when it comes to science and history. It was solely the issue of reading/writing that concerned us, and that's what we based our decision on. It did make the decision easier when we realized that most of his neighborhood friends are 2nd graders now and he'll be in the same grade as the kids he's gravitated towards on his own. He's always been a bit on the immature side for his age socially and just seems "young" (for lack of a better word: as an example, many of his former classmates already talk about girls, but DS still thinks they are icky
), and I think he'll do well to be in 3rd rather than in 4th with his age-peers.
ETA: Feel free to PM if you want to talk, since it seems we're dealing with such similar situations. I have more I could share, but I already wrote a novel!
