Okay!

After last night, I wake up to am email from the She-Ex, and a video of BG doing what shall now be referred to as The World Most Stupid Reading Test.

TWMSRT (hmm - not a snappy acronym!) can be found here and is a random word test. Which is cool, it makes more sense than the random letter tests. But it has one word for each level, and it's plain silly.

I just did it with the AC. He read "sat" and "paint" (although paint was a sounding out, not a knowing) and read the comprehension piece at the bottom. I didn't ask him all of the questions as it's an American test and he wouldn't know what a state was, but he got 9 of the questions right, which is not too bad. (Apparently that's Grade Level 9 - precocious little monkey!) I'm not going to tell the She-Ex that I did the test with AC and his scores though because this isn't about him, it's about the BG. I just needed a level on it from someone I knew.

TWMSRT is not diagnostic though, and so I have asked the She-Ex to have a go at this
and video it again for me, and I'll be able to see how BG is really doing. I'm so glad that She-Ex has started a conversation though, and I will do my utmost to keep it going unless she gets insulting. And then for BG's sake, I'll probably swallow it and carry on.

The second test is an accurate one - I've used it in school and it confirms the reading ages I already had for those children, but meant I could give them a supplementary test during the term just to perk them up a bit.

At least this is a start!

And it means that they have a working webcam again, which means Daddy and BG can chat on there as well, maybe read together. I can borrow books from school that I can scan in and they can read them together if the She-Ex will print them out.

Anyway, I'm not going to get too excited. There's every chance this will just stop when the She-Ex has had enough of me telling her what to do with BG. I hope not.

All I would need is her here, for a couple of half hours a week, and we could defeat the reading monster with no troubles. However, this is better than nothing, so into battle we go! (She'll win, I have no doubt. BG comes from her father, and he can defeat any monster!)

R has an email from her as well this morning, so hopefully it's as positive and useful as the ones to me. He'll be up later, he's going to take us to school, then me onto my course at the Prof Dev Centre. Very helpful, it's all good!