My DD came home on her 10th birthday. I also put her in a grade one year behind (3rd). At 3 months home she began understanding enough not to melt down at every frustration, at 6 months she could converse enough to let me know what she wanted and have short conversations.
Her 3rd grade teacher didn't expect anything from her workwise and this bothered me at first. I thought she should do spelling words or something! But I came to realize that she really wasn't able to do much those first 6 months except absorb what was going on around her. She also began to read pre-school books after the first 6months and advanced rapidly from there (she was a strong reader in Russia). Now at 20 months home she has tested out of ESL and reads at grade level in English. However, I asked her once to underline all of the words she didn't understand in a book and she underlined about every 5th word....so although she can "read" the story and gets the gist of it, she really doesn't comprehend it all - that will come in time. Her 4th grade year was good - the teacher said she improved dramatically - but she still was unable to get much out of the science and social studies units as they are language based. The words and concepts were just to hard for her to understand-so the school did not grade her in these areas.
At this point Julia can hold a conversation with anyone and no one would know she is foreign born except for her slight accent. She will ask me now what words mean and to explain something to her, but she only began doing that a few months ago. She also has retained about 80% of her Russian (we don't speak it at home) so I think she may just have a "brain" for languages. Her ESL teacher said she had learned English in half the normal time. I do get a kick out of her English slip-ups like when she told me about her "trip-field" they were taking at school - it reminds me how far she still has to go!
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