Finally had a class with Kasser again last Friday. Brought the big kids along to his house again because they were having a holiday due to the PSLE Listening Comprehension. So my two biggies did their homework during the one hour I had with Kasser.
The OG portion of our lessons have been shortened, due to his lack of a regular English tutor now, and my discovery that he has absolutely no grammar understanding to speak of. And because his English Exams are coming up, I have to help him brush up a little so that he can make fewer mistakes with simple Subject-Verb Agreement, and do better overall, in Comprehension, Composition and the likes.
So we covered the "igh" sound again, and did Auditory Drill, Visual Drill, Reading with training for Fluency and some spelling. I also did a little on homonyms - using the "i-e" and the "igh" sounds... trying to put into context the words that he didn't know... which was most of them.
Then we moved on to SVA. Despite it being quite a few lessons now, he still doesn't get it. So I made some cards with irregular verbs for him, showing him simple present tense, simple past tense, continuous tense as well as singular and plural forms... He will have to practise sorting them at home with mom, as well as do the exercises that I had crafted for him... handwritten grammar exercises, specially to meet his needs.
I'm feeling a little discouraged with him these days - it seems that since the lessons became Free of Charge, the commitment level has dipped. Lessons are more irregular - he misses lessons more often, for more frivolous reasons... and the mom is less keen, it seems, to have me come as often as I'd like (which is only twice a week). Ah well. Next year, it will be a challenge, because he will have to have lessons in the evening, when I am busy with my own children. And because he is in the morning school, I cannot keep him too late either. So I will have to figure out how to continue to teach him, or if I should stop. We'll see.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
It is Official!!!
"Application for exemption from Mother Tongue - APPROVED"
Finally... we are free from the burden of Chinese... for Stacey that is... so no more Chinese exams this year and forever more! Yeah! My heart leapt with joy when I saw the official looking envelope from Stacey's school today... and when I saw the words above, I did a happy jig all the way to the kitchen to announce it to hubby... who was most amused by my dancing. Haha. But I am so glad that our battle with Chinese homework and Chinese teachers is now over!!!!
Finally... we are free from the burden of Chinese... for Stacey that is... so no more Chinese exams this year and forever more! Yeah! My heart leapt with joy when I saw the official looking envelope from Stacey's school today... and when I saw the words above, I did a happy jig all the way to the kitchen to announce it to hubby... who was most amused by my dancing. Haha. But I am so glad that our battle with Chinese homework and Chinese teachers is now over!!!!
Friday, September 11, 2009
Cancelled Kasser Class
10 minutes before I am due to leave the house for Kasser's class today, the phone rings and I find myself on the line with Kasser's mom. She reports that the child was in school earlier today for hockey and had returned at about 1pm.
At around 3pm, when he was reminded that I was coming over for class, he burst into tears and was whining about how tired he was and how he was not ready for class... so the mom called to ask if I was already on the way, and to ask me if it was OK for class to be cancelled. Sigh.
The boy's tears are just dramatics. They happened in class the other day when I was talking to mom, in his presence, about how to discipline the two children (Kasser and his sister Lindy) and get them to be more independent in studying and in most things... he burst into tears because he felt that she was being unfair, asking them to study for an hour or an hour and a half... to which I retorted that that was severely insufficient, especially since they were so poor in their studies, and needed all the practice they could get. I communicated to the mother, with just facial expressions, to ignore the boy's dramatics as he descended into loud sobbing as we spoke. We continued our conversation, completely ignoring him, and in no time at all, the sobs disappeared and he was back to normal.
So I can only shake my head and sigh that once again, Kasser has won... and lost... because in winning the battle of cancelling OG class, he has lost the opportunity to further improve and solidify his knowledge and skills. And in doing so, he also got one step further into the habit of manipulating his mother into giving in to his nonsense... which means also one step further from being the disciplined child he should be. Sigh.
At around 3pm, when he was reminded that I was coming over for class, he burst into tears and was whining about how tired he was and how he was not ready for class... so the mom called to ask if I was already on the way, and to ask me if it was OK for class to be cancelled. Sigh.
The boy's tears are just dramatics. They happened in class the other day when I was talking to mom, in his presence, about how to discipline the two children (Kasser and his sister Lindy) and get them to be more independent in studying and in most things... he burst into tears because he felt that she was being unfair, asking them to study for an hour or an hour and a half... to which I retorted that that was severely insufficient, especially since they were so poor in their studies, and needed all the practice they could get. I communicated to the mother, with just facial expressions, to ignore the boy's dramatics as he descended into loud sobbing as we spoke. We continued our conversation, completely ignoring him, and in no time at all, the sobs disappeared and he was back to normal.
So I can only shake my head and sigh that once again, Kasser has won... and lost... because in winning the battle of cancelling OG class, he has lost the opportunity to further improve and solidify his knowledge and skills. And in doing so, he also got one step further into the habit of manipulating his mother into giving in to his nonsense... which means also one step further from being the disciplined child he should be. Sigh.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Update on Stacey
Stacey's Psych report finally came out at the end of July... the EP had just had a baby, and we had just returned from a H1N1 affected country, so we postponed the meeting till end of July.
Happily, the EP recommended an exemption for Chinese... much to Stacey's and my relief... sadly, the Special Needs Officer in her school has gone on long leave, and there is apparently no replacement for the time being, so I actually had to email the school's General Office to enquire about the status of the SNO's absence, and how that would affect Stacey's application for her exemption of Chinese. Thankfully, they were able to send in the application anyway, and we are now just waiting for the official approval from MOE for her to finally drop Chinese as a school subject.
The reason I am eager to have her drop Chinese is because the school is looking to bring up their results in Chinese, and they are piling on the homework and raising the bars... unfortunately for Stacey, this leaves her drowning in the process. Homework time is made so much more frustrating because there is so much homework, and she is unable to do it... and it frustrates me even more that we are spending so much time doing homework for a subject that she will eventually drop. So we look forward to the day when we can officially say byebye to the subject.
We have reinstated OG lessons to their rightful place - taking priority over homework and all other things, on the days that it is assigned. Still, it being done at home, it still gets pushed out of the way here and there... but we are back at it with much greater regularity now.
I'm also trying to work more now on fluency and automaticity... the EP revealed that Stacey seems to have trouble truly blending sounds... she tends to rely more on visuals than on blending, trying to "see" the word in her head before "sounding" out the word she is given. So we have been told to step it up on the visual memory side of things, as well as to train her to have a keener sense of visual differences - esp in letter positions. It was suggested that we use "spot the differences" games to train her to pick up on visual differences.
So I'm trying to do that more, besides playing more games that help her to distinguish between words that sound the same but are spelt different... a challenge because she's gotten to the stage where she has quite a few different ways to spell the various long vowel sounds.
I've also taken to spurring her on by giving her a reward system - to encourage her to try her best during class and to work towards her goal - receiving "cute paper" (something that is the rage now in her school apparently) when she finally accumulates enough stamps on her reward sheet. :)
Happily, the EP recommended an exemption for Chinese... much to Stacey's and my relief... sadly, the Special Needs Officer in her school has gone on long leave, and there is apparently no replacement for the time being, so I actually had to email the school's General Office to enquire about the status of the SNO's absence, and how that would affect Stacey's application for her exemption of Chinese. Thankfully, they were able to send in the application anyway, and we are now just waiting for the official approval from MOE for her to finally drop Chinese as a school subject.
The reason I am eager to have her drop Chinese is because the school is looking to bring up their results in Chinese, and they are piling on the homework and raising the bars... unfortunately for Stacey, this leaves her drowning in the process. Homework time is made so much more frustrating because there is so much homework, and she is unable to do it... and it frustrates me even more that we are spending so much time doing homework for a subject that she will eventually drop. So we look forward to the day when we can officially say byebye to the subject.
We have reinstated OG lessons to their rightful place - taking priority over homework and all other things, on the days that it is assigned. Still, it being done at home, it still gets pushed out of the way here and there... but we are back at it with much greater regularity now.
I'm also trying to work more now on fluency and automaticity... the EP revealed that Stacey seems to have trouble truly blending sounds... she tends to rely more on visuals than on blending, trying to "see" the word in her head before "sounding" out the word she is given. So we have been told to step it up on the visual memory side of things, as well as to train her to have a keener sense of visual differences - esp in letter positions. It was suggested that we use "spot the differences" games to train her to pick up on visual differences.
So I'm trying to do that more, besides playing more games that help her to distinguish between words that sound the same but are spelt different... a challenge because she's gotten to the stage where she has quite a few different ways to spell the various long vowel sounds.
I've also taken to spurring her on by giving her a reward system - to encourage her to try her best during class and to work towards her goal - receiving "cute paper" (something that is the rage now in her school apparently) when she finally accumulates enough stamps on her reward sheet. :)
Further Updates... Kasser first...
We restarted lessons with Kasser. After a two month break (the June holidays saw us not having any lessons at all, and then we were away, followed by a period of self-quarantine due to the H1N1 outbreak and so on... then followed by another postponing of the first lesson due to my falling down and spraining my foot very badly), we finally restarted lessons in August. His mother had not been able to get a job, but I managed to convince them to let me come and give him lessons for free... so happily, I was able to continue where we left off.
As expected, he had forgotten quite a bit of his work... we had to revisit the sounds and the rules... and we had to revisit the concepts of "word", "syllable", "sound" and "letter" and so on...
But as of right now, I'm slowing lessons down a great deal now that he is doing the vowel pairs and he is getting quite confused by the many ways to spell the different long vowel sounds... to add to the problem, he has a very poor vocabulary... so not only does he have to tackle homophones and homonyms (words that sound the same and are spelt different), he has to learn the meanings of those words at the same time. And this has proven to be a very great hurdle for him. Even basic words that I expected him to know, he didn't know... and we are talking about a child who is already in the 2nd half of Primary Two!
I've also started integrating grammar and comprehension out of sheer necessity - and to my horror, he has no concept of singular/plural, subject-verb agreement and tenses... all basic stuff! So there has been a lot of work done with that as well, which also then slows down the progress of the OG lessons... sigh. But now that he no longer has 1-1 tuition for English, I feel like I have to help him in that area as well... because while the OG helps him with spelling and reading specifically, it's in a way useless because the language is, a large part, dead... since he doesn't know so many words... argh! And his sentence structures are so weird... he has no idea when to use present/past/continuous tense... never mind the perfect tense and so on! Oh dear... how am I going to help this boy?!
I only realised the depth of his problems when I had set him some basic grammar work to do... In one sentence, he had chosen a word marked for past tense as the answer, which happened to be correct. But when I asked him why it was the word marked for past tense, and not the one marked for present tense, he explained that the word marked for past tense was used for animals, while the one marked for present tense was used for people... how he got that idea, I will never know!
So lessons are going ahead at a snail's pace... while I was doing one new sound every lesson before the long break, right now, we are only managing one new sound every three lessons or so... with a whole bunch of other more "urgent" lessons weaved in, in an effort to bring up his grades for the coming end of year exams. I just hope that this will be enough.
As expected, he had forgotten quite a bit of his work... we had to revisit the sounds and the rules... and we had to revisit the concepts of "word", "syllable", "sound" and "letter" and so on...
But as of right now, I'm slowing lessons down a great deal now that he is doing the vowel pairs and he is getting quite confused by the many ways to spell the different long vowel sounds... to add to the problem, he has a very poor vocabulary... so not only does he have to tackle homophones and homonyms (words that sound the same and are spelt different), he has to learn the meanings of those words at the same time. And this has proven to be a very great hurdle for him. Even basic words that I expected him to know, he didn't know... and we are talking about a child who is already in the 2nd half of Primary Two!
I've also started integrating grammar and comprehension out of sheer necessity - and to my horror, he has no concept of singular/plural, subject-verb agreement and tenses... all basic stuff! So there has been a lot of work done with that as well, which also then slows down the progress of the OG lessons... sigh. But now that he no longer has 1-1 tuition for English, I feel like I have to help him in that area as well... because while the OG helps him with spelling and reading specifically, it's in a way useless because the language is, a large part, dead... since he doesn't know so many words... argh! And his sentence structures are so weird... he has no idea when to use present/past/continuous tense... never mind the perfect tense and so on! Oh dear... how am I going to help this boy?!
I only realised the depth of his problems when I had set him some basic grammar work to do... In one sentence, he had chosen a word marked for past tense as the answer, which happened to be correct. But when I asked him why it was the word marked for past tense, and not the one marked for present tense, he explained that the word marked for past tense was used for animals, while the one marked for present tense was used for people... how he got that idea, I will never know!
So lessons are going ahead at a snail's pace... while I was doing one new sound every lesson before the long break, right now, we are only managing one new sound every three lessons or so... with a whole bunch of other more "urgent" lessons weaved in, in an effort to bring up his grades for the coming end of year exams. I just hope that this will be enough.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Dead blog... but going to be revived...
Firstly, I must apologise, because this blog has effectively been dead for the last almost 4 months. Sorry about that.
I will now update in several nutshells about the various kids I have.
Kasser:
Kasser has stopped lessons for the time being. The economy has hit his family hard, but his dad is one of those who must pay for lessons and hesitate to accept when I offer to teach for free (until Kasser's mom finds a job). So I have not seen Kasser since the school holidays began, and I will not be seeing him for the next 2 weeks since I will be away, then on self-quarantine together with my children.
Zach and Stacey:
Lessons have been very haphazard in terms of frequency... homework got in the way most of the time, as well as a lack of discipline on my part. I have to do something about that. Next week, after we return, I am determined to set them back on track with OG.
Stacey's Psych Report:
We finally have exemption for Chinese more or less in the bag! Stacey went for a follow up session with the EP over the June Holidays, and the EP said that she would be giving her the diagnosis as well as asking for exemption for Chinese, and longer time during exams. So now, I'm waiting for the report to come out (we will only receive it after we return from our trip and after our LOA - cos the EP has a new baby and we don't want to bring any germs over...). This is a huge relief because Stacey's homework woes this semester has also been in part due to the Chinese teacher's habit of giving homework in chunks... 5-7 pages of work and writing, plus extra writing practice... and we are talking 2-3 pages worth. All due the next day. So not funny. And the task of writing is particularly difficult for Stacey, so she usually ends up in a meltdown on Chinese homework days. In fact, I took to not helping her and just asking her to treat her homework like the exams - so that her teacher would have a better idea of what she knew and did not know... otherwise, I would just end up giving her the answers and that made homework meaningless.
Exam Results:
This year, Stacey didn't have any special accomodations arranged like she did for last year in P1 (because she had a very enlightened teacher who provided her with good support. Unfortunately, we lost that teacher this year - she taught the P1s again) so she bombed her Spelling and (unseen) Dictation and brought home a score of only 66 (1/15 for S&D) when she could have scored 75 had she scored full marks for just the spelling section. Ah well. Still, she managed a 83 for Maths, which was wonderful, and of course, a fail for Chinese, which was expected.
Zach did reasonably well too - 74 for English, 70+ (can't remember now) for Maths... I think it was close to 80... then 66 for Science (where he got completely tripped up by the language and the fact that the answers had to be super precise). Without Chinese, his average score jumped up dramatically and he found himself ranked somewhere in the middle of his class, as opposed to the bottom 5 where he usually found himself in the previous years due to Chinese pulling his marks right down. So we're pleased with his work too.
I will now update in several nutshells about the various kids I have.
Kasser:
Kasser has stopped lessons for the time being. The economy has hit his family hard, but his dad is one of those who must pay for lessons and hesitate to accept when I offer to teach for free (until Kasser's mom finds a job). So I have not seen Kasser since the school holidays began, and I will not be seeing him for the next 2 weeks since I will be away, then on self-quarantine together with my children.
Zach and Stacey:
Lessons have been very haphazard in terms of frequency... homework got in the way most of the time, as well as a lack of discipline on my part. I have to do something about that. Next week, after we return, I am determined to set them back on track with OG.
Stacey's Psych Report:
We finally have exemption for Chinese more or less in the bag! Stacey went for a follow up session with the EP over the June Holidays, and the EP said that she would be giving her the diagnosis as well as asking for exemption for Chinese, and longer time during exams. So now, I'm waiting for the report to come out (we will only receive it after we return from our trip and after our LOA - cos the EP has a new baby and we don't want to bring any germs over...). This is a huge relief because Stacey's homework woes this semester has also been in part due to the Chinese teacher's habit of giving homework in chunks... 5-7 pages of work and writing, plus extra writing practice... and we are talking 2-3 pages worth. All due the next day. So not funny. And the task of writing is particularly difficult for Stacey, so she usually ends up in a meltdown on Chinese homework days. In fact, I took to not helping her and just asking her to treat her homework like the exams - so that her teacher would have a better idea of what she knew and did not know... otherwise, I would just end up giving her the answers and that made homework meaningless.
Exam Results:
This year, Stacey didn't have any special accomodations arranged like she did for last year in P1 (because she had a very enlightened teacher who provided her with good support. Unfortunately, we lost that teacher this year - she taught the P1s again) so she bombed her Spelling and (unseen) Dictation and brought home a score of only 66 (1/15 for S&D) when she could have scored 75 had she scored full marks for just the spelling section. Ah well. Still, she managed a 83 for Maths, which was wonderful, and of course, a fail for Chinese, which was expected.
Zach did reasonably well too - 74 for English, 70+ (can't remember now) for Maths... I think it was close to 80... then 66 for Science (where he got completely tripped up by the language and the fact that the answers had to be super precise). Without Chinese, his average score jumped up dramatically and he found himself ranked somewhere in the middle of his class, as opposed to the bottom 5 where he usually found himself in the previous years due to Chinese pulling his marks right down. So we're pleased with his work too.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Proud moments...
Zach came home a while back with a top score in his Topical Test 1 Composition Writing, scoring an impressive 15/20, being one of 2 top scorers in his class (the other top scorer is also the other dyslexic in the class).
This round, with the CA1s just over, he also came home with another top score, this time in his English CA Paper... an impressive 36/40... which translates to 90%! Good on him. Again, this is the top score in his mixed-ability class. He lost 3 marks in Comprehension, which is something that is expected, and he didn't know "canoeing" and "trekking", and so missed one MCQ. But overall, very good!!!
Stacey also came home with an impressive 48/50 for her latest Maths CA1!!! This was apparently also the highest in class, she said.
So I'm very proud of the two of them... they have worked really hard and done well. Good job! And all this without any accomodations to their dyslexia!
This round, with the CA1s just over, he also came home with another top score, this time in his English CA Paper... an impressive 36/40... which translates to 90%! Good on him. Again, this is the top score in his mixed-ability class. He lost 3 marks in Comprehension, which is something that is expected, and he didn't know "canoeing" and "trekking", and so missed one MCQ. But overall, very good!!!
Stacey also came home with an impressive 48/50 for her latest Maths CA1!!! This was apparently also the highest in class, she said.
So I'm very proud of the two of them... they have worked really hard and done well. Good job! And all this without any accomodations to their dyslexia!
Stacey & Zach on Spelling Rules
I've been trying to integrate more games into OG lessons... on Saturday, we did the session entirely in games, moving away from the standard OG lesson for that day. We used spelling cards and I got them to verbalise the rules whenever they made a mistake. We used sorting cards for the "tch vs. ch", "dge vs. ge" and "ck vs k" words, explaining over and over again when to use what.
Zach was a challenge because he would keep relying on his visual memory to tell himself which words were correct instead of using the rules to sort out the words.
Zach is constantly a challenge because he has such a good visual memory bank... there are so many words that he already knows, so I'm constantly trying to find words that he doesn't know so he can rely on sounding them instead of on his pre-knowledge of the spelling. argh!
Zach was a challenge because he would keep relying on his visual memory to tell himself which words were correct instead of using the rules to sort out the words.
Zach is constantly a challenge because he has such a good visual memory bank... there are so many words that he already knows, so I'm constantly trying to find words that he doesn't know so he can rely on sounding them instead of on his pre-knowledge of the spelling. argh!
Lesson 16 tomorrow...
Am seeing Kasser tomorrow for his 16th lesson. Time flies. It will be exactly 2 whole months since I started working on him, and I'm quite pleased with his progress so far...
We've moved up to the "-ed" phonogram, and tomorrow we will be embarking on the "magic-e". This in itself will be a challenge. So far, he has a tendency to try to split sounds like "-nk", "-ng" and even stuff like "tch", "ck", "wh" into their individual letters, until you remind him once more. Once he is reminded, he's fine.
Maybe I'm trying to push him too far too fast, but then again, he is already in P2, and needs to be bumped up.
I'm also trying to come up with more creative ways of getting him to revise his learned words. Without constant exposure, he does not remember them after a while, although this is to be expected.
I also hope to expose him to more passages. So far, with all the bumping up, we are still not getting in much exposure to passages and comprehension. I want to integrate more vocabulary and comprehension into lessons, but that will slow us down. He is still having regular English tuition, cos the parents seem to feel that OG will not be sufficient... but I'm worried that the English tutor will undo whatever he is taught in OG, including the building up of confidence and self-esteem. Ah well.
Hopefully, he will remember to go to bed early tonight, and be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow for class. He was tired again the last lesson, and was literally falling asleep at the desk when asked to read. He was also showing reversals in reading when tired, as well as sounding wrongly in the oddest fashion... sigh.
We've moved up to the "-ed" phonogram, and tomorrow we will be embarking on the "magic-e". This in itself will be a challenge. So far, he has a tendency to try to split sounds like "-nk", "-ng" and even stuff like "tch", "ck", "wh" into their individual letters, until you remind him once more. Once he is reminded, he's fine.
Maybe I'm trying to push him too far too fast, but then again, he is already in P2, and needs to be bumped up.
I'm also trying to come up with more creative ways of getting him to revise his learned words. Without constant exposure, he does not remember them after a while, although this is to be expected.
I also hope to expose him to more passages. So far, with all the bumping up, we are still not getting in much exposure to passages and comprehension. I want to integrate more vocabulary and comprehension into lessons, but that will slow us down. He is still having regular English tuition, cos the parents seem to feel that OG will not be sufficient... but I'm worried that the English tutor will undo whatever he is taught in OG, including the building up of confidence and self-esteem. Ah well.
Hopefully, he will remember to go to bed early tonight, and be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed tomorrow for class. He was tired again the last lesson, and was literally falling asleep at the desk when asked to read. He was also showing reversals in reading when tired, as well as sounding wrongly in the oddest fashion... sigh.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Backblog - Catch up Posts...
Oops, sorry, I haven't been updating this blog regularly... it's been almost 10 days since the last post. Anyway...
Friday 20th February
Kasser had his lesson again... I think we moved on the the -nk sound (which is essentially 4 sounds really, because it's 'ank', 'ink', 'unk' and 'onk') and also started him on the concepts of "letter", "word", "sound", "syllable", "vowel" & "consonant"... It was quite tough going at first, because he used "letter" and "word" interchangeably... and would also confuse "letter name" and "sound" as well... So we had to go through quite a few times with various words, having him identify the number of words / letters / sounds / syllables / vowels / consonants... I played a game from the 'Go Phonics' set at the end of the lesson and he was thrilled... and at the same time he got in some much needed "th" reading...
Saturday 21st February
Stacey & Zach had their OG lessons during our "campout" at Dance School - I call it a campout because we are at Dance School from 0930 to 1600h on Saturdays... thanks to the various classes and so on.
Zach had his 4th lesson and he did OK, considering he's still very new to OG and I'm going at a blistering pace in order for him to quickly move on to syllabication and affixes. I've also had to tweek the OG lesson a little to fit his needs and to challenge his strong visual memory. He had a habit of going about things backwards... and that was highly frustrating, both for me and him... for example, I gave him the word "lute" to spell. He was supposed to listen to the word, break it up into its sounds /l/, /long u/ and /t/, and use his fingerspelling to keep track of his sounds. But somehow, he already knew in his head that it was spelled l-u-t-e, so he kept on referring to his visual memory, and ended up fingerspelling it /l/, /short u/, /t/ and /short e/! And what made it worse was that after saying those 4 sounds, he could "combine" it back into "lute"! Argh! It's an ongoing process... we are still struggling to settle into the skills of fingerspelling and sounding without relying on visual memory and learned spelling.
Stacey has moved on to Penny words... she's quite happy to have gone on... so now we're moving into spelling of rabbit, reptile and penny words... she's quite pleased with herself and the accomplishment of being able to spell longer words... LOL.
Tuesday 24th February
Only Kasser had his lesson today - so we moved on to -ck words... he's best when he's alert and ready for class... but lessons become so draggy and such a chore when he is tired. Still, the lesson went on fairly well, and we played some spelling games with the cards. We also read from a simple phonics based reader, meant for younger children.
Kasser's mom expressed concern that he is very poor with his comprehension - something that is very common with dyslexics. She was relating how his father would just go at him because he didn't know how to answer the comprehension questions, and didn't seem to get it... and whenever his father would press him to get an answer, he would panic and be even far less able to get the answer right.
It reminds me of a time when we were given a passage written by a dyslexic, completely bad handwriting, bad spelling that took a very very long time to decipher... and we had to do a comprehension based on that "passage". It really opened my eyes to what the dyslexics struggle with on a day to day basis. And I am so tempted to write a passage in gibberish, give it to his father and make him do a comprehension based on that... then he will seriously know what his son is up against on a day to day basis. Now to find myself a dyslexic who writes badly enough... then there is authenticity in the passage. Heh.
Zach and Stacey didn't have their lessons today. So much for top priority. But I'm determined not to let things slide again.... sigh.
Friday 20th February
Kasser had his lesson again... I think we moved on the the -nk sound (which is essentially 4 sounds really, because it's 'ank', 'ink', 'unk' and 'onk') and also started him on the concepts of "letter", "word", "sound", "syllable", "vowel" & "consonant"... It was quite tough going at first, because he used "letter" and "word" interchangeably... and would also confuse "letter name" and "sound" as well... So we had to go through quite a few times with various words, having him identify the number of words / letters / sounds / syllables / vowels / consonants... I played a game from the 'Go Phonics' set at the end of the lesson and he was thrilled... and at the same time he got in some much needed "th" reading...
Saturday 21st February
Stacey & Zach had their OG lessons during our "campout" at Dance School - I call it a campout because we are at Dance School from 0930 to 1600h on Saturdays... thanks to the various classes and so on.
Zach had his 4th lesson and he did OK, considering he's still very new to OG and I'm going at a blistering pace in order for him to quickly move on to syllabication and affixes. I've also had to tweek the OG lesson a little to fit his needs and to challenge his strong visual memory. He had a habit of going about things backwards... and that was highly frustrating, both for me and him... for example, I gave him the word "lute" to spell. He was supposed to listen to the word, break it up into its sounds /l/, /long u/ and /t/, and use his fingerspelling to keep track of his sounds. But somehow, he already knew in his head that it was spelled l-u-t-e, so he kept on referring to his visual memory, and ended up fingerspelling it /l/, /short u/, /t/ and /short e/! And what made it worse was that after saying those 4 sounds, he could "combine" it back into "lute"! Argh! It's an ongoing process... we are still struggling to settle into the skills of fingerspelling and sounding without relying on visual memory and learned spelling.
Stacey has moved on to Penny words... she's quite happy to have gone on... so now we're moving into spelling of rabbit, reptile and penny words... she's quite pleased with herself and the accomplishment of being able to spell longer words... LOL.
Tuesday 24th February
Only Kasser had his lesson today - so we moved on to -ck words... he's best when he's alert and ready for class... but lessons become so draggy and such a chore when he is tired. Still, the lesson went on fairly well, and we played some spelling games with the cards. We also read from a simple phonics based reader, meant for younger children.
Kasser's mom expressed concern that he is very poor with his comprehension - something that is very common with dyslexics. She was relating how his father would just go at him because he didn't know how to answer the comprehension questions, and didn't seem to get it... and whenever his father would press him to get an answer, he would panic and be even far less able to get the answer right.
It reminds me of a time when we were given a passage written by a dyslexic, completely bad handwriting, bad spelling that took a very very long time to decipher... and we had to do a comprehension based on that "passage". It really opened my eyes to what the dyslexics struggle with on a day to day basis. And I am so tempted to write a passage in gibberish, give it to his father and make him do a comprehension based on that... then he will seriously know what his son is up against on a day to day basis. Now to find myself a dyslexic who writes badly enough... then there is authenticity in the passage. Heh.
Zach and Stacey didn't have their lessons today. So much for top priority. But I'm determined not to let things slide again.... sigh.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
My first Support Group Meeting...
Went to Zach's school TWICE today... once in the morning for a Parents Support Group for Kids with Dyslexia meeting, and once to pick him up from school because he had to stay back for Science Remedial Class today.
The Support Group meeting was interesting. The SNO gave a review of what happened last year, as well as talked about the kind of accomodations that the kids (or rather their parents) could request for in exams... I was actually quite surprised to learn that Special Accomodations in Primary School was something new... because in Secondary School, all the things that they had mentioned were more or less the norm - extra time, larger font, one sided printing for Compre papers and so on... yet, the impression that I got was that it was new to Primary Schools. Hmmm. So the stuff they were talking about were all really very familiar, esp from having babysat the Dsylexics for one of the exams one of the years - I think because I was pregnant or something, so they wanted to save me from walking up down and all around the school... so I sat in the Special Exams Room to invigilate those with extra time and what not. It was quite fun really, cos the room was "L-shaped" and the invigilator didn't have to stand up and walk around at all... just sit down. Haha.
Anyways, I digress....
Then there was some talk about "Homework Policy" which apparently is a new thing this year - something about making sure that the boys complete their homework. Honestly, I had not heard about Homework Policy until today... LOL. Maybe I did, but because life in our house already has a rule about completing today's homework today, I didn't think it was a new thing, or that it was some sort of an "initiative".... So some of the parents of the Dyslexic kids were saying that it was impossible for their kids to complete their hw (I think most of these parents are like full-time working parents, so they only have time to sit down for homework after they come home from work, which might be late) on time, and was wondering whether the teachers could be more understanding and give more leeway and what not.
Dunno. As for us, our "rule" at home has always been school homework must always be completed the day it is received... as long as you still have waking hours left, you should work hard to complete all homework. Exception to the rule - the teacher gives a great big whopping pile of hw but gives a longer deadline (eg 3 days later)... in which case, if you run out of waking hours (read 7.30pm) you get to stop and keep it for the next day. This has always been the case since they started bringing hw home from kindergarten, that you always completed your hw before you could play... so the kiddos just seem to accept it, and do not question it. Of course, while the cat's away, the mice will play... today was a classic example. Zach and Stace had 1.5hrs "free" each during the other's Chinese tuition time. I was away 'cus the youngest had chinese enrichment outside, so they stayed home with the Chinese tutor, taking turns. They are supposed to do their work during their 1.5hours but of course, the amount of work they completed in my absence was so miniscule, you just know that most of that 1.5hrs was spent daydreaming and playing a fool. Not that they couldn't because they are dyslexic. Not that they couldn't because of anything. They just didn't because they allowed themselves to be distracted.
So that made for a very frustrated mommy who came home at 6.30pm to find very little had been accomplished. In the end, Zach rushed through his school hw, and Maths Enrichment hw that is due tomorrow is not completed - not that they have time to complete it tomorrow because both come home late from school every Friday. Sigh.
And of course, with this my 2nd policy kicks in - I rescue no one (when it's a result of their own faults). They jolly well will get into trouble with their enrichment teacher for not having completed their work. Too bad. (The downside is that the enrichment teacher will not really scold them! So it's no motivation to make sure it's done.)
I digress again.
So basically the meeting was dominated by a few who had some bees in their bonnets really... I didn't say very very much because it was my first meeting, and I felt like I needed to sort of size up the people around first... LOL. But I did contribute and give suggestions, referring to what I had done with Stacey and Zach from past experience.
There was this lady who seemed very interested in signing up to get herself OG trained... the problem was that her pronunciation and mastery of the English Language in itself was somewhat lacking... and I knew that even if she did end up taking the course, she would not be able to execute it properly because the sounds would not come out right, nor would there be a full grasp of the nuances and subtleties of the language... but I didn't think I knew how to say it without sounding judgemental or condescending... so I didn't.
Still... this whole support group thing should be quite interesting. The SNOs are interesting people... should be fun to work with them in seeking to support Zach and the other SN kids...
The Support Group meeting was interesting. The SNO gave a review of what happened last year, as well as talked about the kind of accomodations that the kids (or rather their parents) could request for in exams... I was actually quite surprised to learn that Special Accomodations in Primary School was something new... because in Secondary School, all the things that they had mentioned were more or less the norm - extra time, larger font, one sided printing for Compre papers and so on... yet, the impression that I got was that it was new to Primary Schools. Hmmm. So the stuff they were talking about were all really very familiar, esp from having babysat the Dsylexics for one of the exams one of the years - I think because I was pregnant or something, so they wanted to save me from walking up down and all around the school... so I sat in the Special Exams Room to invigilate those with extra time and what not. It was quite fun really, cos the room was "L-shaped" and the invigilator didn't have to stand up and walk around at all... just sit down. Haha.
Anyways, I digress....
Then there was some talk about "Homework Policy" which apparently is a new thing this year - something about making sure that the boys complete their homework. Honestly, I had not heard about Homework Policy until today... LOL. Maybe I did, but because life in our house already has a rule about completing today's homework today, I didn't think it was a new thing, or that it was some sort of an "initiative".... So some of the parents of the Dyslexic kids were saying that it was impossible for their kids to complete their hw (I think most of these parents are like full-time working parents, so they only have time to sit down for homework after they come home from work, which might be late) on time, and was wondering whether the teachers could be more understanding and give more leeway and what not.
Dunno. As for us, our "rule" at home has always been school homework must always be completed the day it is received... as long as you still have waking hours left, you should work hard to complete all homework. Exception to the rule - the teacher gives a great big whopping pile of hw but gives a longer deadline (eg 3 days later)... in which case, if you run out of waking hours (read 7.30pm) you get to stop and keep it for the next day. This has always been the case since they started bringing hw home from kindergarten, that you always completed your hw before you could play... so the kiddos just seem to accept it, and do not question it. Of course, while the cat's away, the mice will play... today was a classic example. Zach and Stace had 1.5hrs "free" each during the other's Chinese tuition time. I was away 'cus the youngest had chinese enrichment outside, so they stayed home with the Chinese tutor, taking turns. They are supposed to do their work during their 1.5hours but of course, the amount of work they completed in my absence was so miniscule, you just know that most of that 1.5hrs was spent daydreaming and playing a fool. Not that they couldn't because they are dyslexic. Not that they couldn't because of anything. They just didn't because they allowed themselves to be distracted.
So that made for a very frustrated mommy who came home at 6.30pm to find very little had been accomplished. In the end, Zach rushed through his school hw, and Maths Enrichment hw that is due tomorrow is not completed - not that they have time to complete it tomorrow because both come home late from school every Friday. Sigh.
And of course, with this my 2nd policy kicks in - I rescue no one (when it's a result of their own faults). They jolly well will get into trouble with their enrichment teacher for not having completed their work. Too bad. (The downside is that the enrichment teacher will not really scold them! So it's no motivation to make sure it's done.)
I digress again.
So basically the meeting was dominated by a few who had some bees in their bonnets really... I didn't say very very much because it was my first meeting, and I felt like I needed to sort of size up the people around first... LOL. But I did contribute and give suggestions, referring to what I had done with Stacey and Zach from past experience.
There was this lady who seemed very interested in signing up to get herself OG trained... the problem was that her pronunciation and mastery of the English Language in itself was somewhat lacking... and I knew that even if she did end up taking the course, she would not be able to execute it properly because the sounds would not come out right, nor would there be a full grasp of the nuances and subtleties of the language... but I didn't think I knew how to say it without sounding judgemental or condescending... so I didn't.
Still... this whole support group thing should be quite interesting. The SNOs are interesting people... should be fun to work with them in seeking to support Zach and the other SN kids...
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Kasser & his Dad
Kasser was so pleased to have been "promoted" to the single line sheet on Tuesday... but I was really pleased to see that he was really making the effort to write neatly and form his letters correctly.
We also moved on to the concept of syllables... I'm trying to bump him up so that we move into bigger words... but he struggled slightly to differentiate between a word, a sound, a letter and a syllable... it's confusing for them at first... but they get it soon enough.
His father woke up towards the end when I was leaving and started again to proclaim that his son was lazy and to put him down. I feel so sad for him. It has come to a point where I cannot say even the slightest thing negative, or the father will pounce on it and denounce the son to be everything negative under the son... Kasser's demeanour changes so much in the presence of his father and the ranting that comes with it. Poor child.
I told the mom to encourage him more... and she said it was the father who would constantly be scolding them and so on... but I think the father also feels in a way that he has to make up for the wife's "mollycoddling" of the children... it's finding a balance for both parents I guess.
He's up to the -ng phonogram already... next lesson we move on to the -nk phonogram... plus I hope to introduce the concept of closed syllables to him... hopefully he understands... if so, we can run with it, and that will greatly build up his confidence.
We also moved on to the concept of syllables... I'm trying to bump him up so that we move into bigger words... but he struggled slightly to differentiate between a word, a sound, a letter and a syllable... it's confusing for them at first... but they get it soon enough.
His father woke up towards the end when I was leaving and started again to proclaim that his son was lazy and to put him down. I feel so sad for him. It has come to a point where I cannot say even the slightest thing negative, or the father will pounce on it and denounce the son to be everything negative under the son... Kasser's demeanour changes so much in the presence of his father and the ranting that comes with it. Poor child.
I told the mom to encourage him more... and she said it was the father who would constantly be scolding them and so on... but I think the father also feels in a way that he has to make up for the wife's "mollycoddling" of the children... it's finding a balance for both parents I guess.
He's up to the -ng phonogram already... next lesson we move on to the -nk phonogram... plus I hope to introduce the concept of closed syllables to him... hopefully he understands... if so, we can run with it, and that will greatly build up his confidence.
Stacey's progress
It's a fine line as usual, treading between challenging Stacey and not demoralising her... but she's getting a little complacent with the easier words and complains whenever the words are a little more complex and she's required to think... and she hates making mistakes...
So in order to motivate her to put her whining and attitude aside, I've got to entice her with games and such...
We've moved into the vowel digraphs... having just covered "oy" yesterday... and with that came the concept of positions...
We also recapped syllabication because I want her to move into Penny words on Saturday... and that will lead us into open syllables with long vowels... but she already knows long vowels, so I don't think that will be a problem.
We're also working on more spelling words based on rules... so looking at what to look out for, so that she knows when she has to apply a rule. But really, it's also building up her visual memory bank, so that she's exposed to the words many many times over so that she gets so familiar.
I had a proud mommy moment the other day when she successfully applied the FLOSS rule to her tamagotchi pet in naming it Bess... when I heard her say she wanted to name her pet /bes/, I thought that she would spell it as "Bes"... so I was pleasantly surprised to see that she had applied her floss rule successfully and had remembered to double the "s" at the end...
So in order to motivate her to put her whining and attitude aside, I've got to entice her with games and such...
We've moved into the vowel digraphs... having just covered "oy" yesterday... and with that came the concept of positions...
We also recapped syllabication because I want her to move into Penny words on Saturday... and that will lead us into open syllables with long vowels... but she already knows long vowels, so I don't think that will be a problem.
We're also working on more spelling words based on rules... so looking at what to look out for, so that she knows when she has to apply a rule. But really, it's also building up her visual memory bank, so that she's exposed to the words many many times over so that she gets so familiar.
I had a proud mommy moment the other day when she successfully applied the FLOSS rule to her tamagotchi pet in naming it Bess... when I heard her say she wanted to name her pet /bes/, I thought that she would spell it as "Bes"... so I was pleasantly surprised to see that she had applied her floss rule successfully and had remembered to double the "s" at the end...
Zach - Tuesday's lesson
We're making OG lessons a priority... just like we would be forced to if we were sending Zach for OG intervention outside.... so it takes priority over homework, in the sense that we do it even before he sets out doing homework, or we make sure we get the lesson done before he goes to bed.
Am plunging him into rules, rules and more rules... rules about syllables, rules about sounds, rules about position and so on... it's a lot for him to digest, but as Ron is always saying "bump it up!" So Tuesday's lesson we finished covering the lower level rules, and I'm bumping him up into syllabication quickly, covering closed syllables, v-c-e syllables, Rabbit words and Reptile words all in the next lesson. But I know he can.
He's quickly got the hang of fingerspelling... and like the EP said, once he gets the hang of something, he's really fast... and he has flown with fingerspelling. I try to give him words I'm pretty sure he doesn't know (and I'm right because halfway through yesterday's lesson he said, "these are nonsense words right?" and I'm like, no... these are real words! LOL!) so that he's forced to sound them and work with the rules he's learnt and just practising applying them and figuring out what to look for so that he knows when he should apply what rule... of course, it doesn't help that the English language is full of contradictions and exceptions... sigh.
But I'm looking forward to the day when his dyslexia fades into the background because all these things will become 2nd-nature. I hope that for all my students, present and future... my own kids included, of course.
Am plunging him into rules, rules and more rules... rules about syllables, rules about sounds, rules about position and so on... it's a lot for him to digest, but as Ron is always saying "bump it up!" So Tuesday's lesson we finished covering the lower level rules, and I'm bumping him up into syllabication quickly, covering closed syllables, v-c-e syllables, Rabbit words and Reptile words all in the next lesson. But I know he can.
He's quickly got the hang of fingerspelling... and like the EP said, once he gets the hang of something, he's really fast... and he has flown with fingerspelling. I try to give him words I'm pretty sure he doesn't know (and I'm right because halfway through yesterday's lesson he said, "these are nonsense words right?" and I'm like, no... these are real words! LOL!) so that he's forced to sound them and work with the rules he's learnt and just practising applying them and figuring out what to look for so that he knows when he should apply what rule... of course, it doesn't help that the English language is full of contradictions and exceptions... sigh.
But I'm looking forward to the day when his dyslexia fades into the background because all these things will become 2nd-nature. I hope that for all my students, present and future... my own kids included, of course.
Back breaking...
I spent quite a few back breaking hours today making game pieces for future OG lessons...
First I had to make a copy of the sheet of game pieces... then I highlighted them different colours just to make them look pretty, and cut them out in long strips. I put double sided tape on them, then cut them into their individual squares. Then I removed the tapes and pasted them onto 200gsm blue paper, and cut them up again into squares (now highlighted with a blue frame around) then arranged them onto hot laminate backing, and ran the two sheets through my hot laminator... then cut up the freshly laminated pieces, making sure to round the edges.
All that, just so the kids can have a slightly more fun time differentiating between dge, ge, tch, ch, c, k and so on... but I figure, since I'm doing this for at least 3 kids right now, and hopefully more in the future, this investment in time, effort and some money is well worth it... but I need to convince my aching back and shoulder muscles that this is true.... :P
First I had to make a copy of the sheet of game pieces... then I highlighted them different colours just to make them look pretty, and cut them out in long strips. I put double sided tape on them, then cut them into their individual squares. Then I removed the tapes and pasted them onto 200gsm blue paper, and cut them up again into squares (now highlighted with a blue frame around) then arranged them onto hot laminate backing, and ran the two sheets through my hot laminator... then cut up the freshly laminated pieces, making sure to round the edges.
All that, just so the kids can have a slightly more fun time differentiating between dge, ge, tch, ch, c, k and so on... but I figure, since I'm doing this for at least 3 kids right now, and hopefully more in the future, this investment in time, effort and some money is well worth it... but I need to convince my aching back and shoulder muscles that this is true.... :P
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Stopped for the "time being"...
Received an SMS from Donny's mother today... saying that the children (my two godchildren, Donny and his sister Elvy) had been sick and was on medication and it made them drowsy, so she asked to stop lessons "for the time being"....
And I just can't help but feel that she just doesn't realise how important it is for Donny to catch up. He's already in K2, and there is still so much where he is lagging far far behind in... his reading skills are sadly lacking, and he will definitely have trouble coping with being in P1 next year.
So fine, it's just as well I suppose. My own Stacey has ballet exams coming up, and she's got extra coaching classes on Sundays from next week until mid-march... so I'll stop lessons then, for the time being, and if she cancels yet another class when the ballet exams are over, I think I shall just give up.
If his mother cannot be bothered to make his lessons a priority (and these are lessons for which others would have to fork out about $600+ a month), then there's really nothing I can say. As it is, I am only seeing him once a week, which for him, is sadly insufficient because he is lagging so far behind... and she can't even commit to that one hour a week. As the godmother, there is little I can do or say other than to pray for the child, and pray that he doesn't become one of those demoralised children who struggle so much with school that in the end, they seek out bad company and find themselves in trouble both in and out of school. Sigh.
And I just can't help but feel that she just doesn't realise how important it is for Donny to catch up. He's already in K2, and there is still so much where he is lagging far far behind in... his reading skills are sadly lacking, and he will definitely have trouble coping with being in P1 next year.
So fine, it's just as well I suppose. My own Stacey has ballet exams coming up, and she's got extra coaching classes on Sundays from next week until mid-march... so I'll stop lessons then, for the time being, and if she cancels yet another class when the ballet exams are over, I think I shall just give up.
If his mother cannot be bothered to make his lessons a priority (and these are lessons for which others would have to fork out about $600+ a month), then there's really nothing I can say. As it is, I am only seeing him once a week, which for him, is sadly insufficient because he is lagging so far behind... and she can't even commit to that one hour a week. As the godmother, there is little I can do or say other than to pray for the child, and pray that he doesn't become one of those demoralised children who struggle so much with school that in the end, they seek out bad company and find themselves in trouble both in and out of school. Sigh.
Kasser is alert...
It is so important for the children to be well-rested to be ready for their OG lesson, and Kasser is the perfect example. The previous week saw a very tired Kasser struggling to blend, spell and learn... this last week, after some intervention from daddy, saw a much more alert Kasser... he'd had more sleep, and he was more ready for class.
The 2nd lesson this week went reasonably well. He was a little more tired than the first lesson, but definitely less so than during last week's lessons, so it was so much better.
I let him play with the spelling cards again, and he enjoyed it very much. This coming week, I hope to take him into reading books and playing games, and building vocabulary. We'll see. So far, we're only into ch... so the next lesson will see us venturing into the Floss rule probably... and I also want to start him on syllabication soon.
It's only been about 8 lessons so far... but I think he's come a long way. But then again, he's in P2... he really needs to move on...
The 2nd lesson this week went reasonably well. He was a little more tired than the first lesson, but definitely less so than during last week's lessons, so it was so much better.
I let him play with the spelling cards again, and he enjoyed it very much. This coming week, I hope to take him into reading books and playing games, and building vocabulary. We'll see. So far, we're only into ch... so the next lesson will see us venturing into the Floss rule probably... and I also want to start him on syllabication soon.
It's only been about 8 lessons so far... but I think he's come a long way. But then again, he's in P2... he really needs to move on...
Zach's 2nd lesson
I've decided that since Zach already knows so many of the sounds, I'll teach him those that he doesn't know, and plunge straight into rules... so that's what we did. Like Stace this week, we covered the c vs k for /k/, dge vs ge vs g vs j for /j/, and the FLOSS rule... I wanted to do more, but I could see that he was very tired by the end of about 40 minutes, so I took out the spelling cards and got him to think the rules through to spell words.
The trouble with teaching Zach is that he is so familiar with the simpler words, I have to move on to the harder ones to bump him up as well as to force him to blend and apply the rules, instead of relying on his superior visual memory.
A shortcut way to do things would be to use his visual memory and just give him word lists to memorise, which he would do easily... but that would defeat the purpose, since he would not be able to memorise and understand the many gazillion words in the English language... not to mention the many other words in the specialised fields he will eventually take up.
Thus I'm keen to quickly familiarise him with the sounds and their rules, then move into suffixes, prefixes as well as syllabication... again the challenge with syllabication is that he is already familiar with so many words, that he wouldn't really be dividing them according to the rules, just plunging straight into reading them as he remembers. And to ask him to divide it up anyway if he already knows the word will only lead to frustration because he sees it as a redundant exercise.... sigh.
I think games is my only solution to this problem... cos if anything is a game, it doesn't matter if it's easy or redundant... then winning by following the rules is what gets us there!
The trouble with teaching Zach is that he is so familiar with the simpler words, I have to move on to the harder ones to bump him up as well as to force him to blend and apply the rules, instead of relying on his superior visual memory.
A shortcut way to do things would be to use his visual memory and just give him word lists to memorise, which he would do easily... but that would defeat the purpose, since he would not be able to memorise and understand the many gazillion words in the English language... not to mention the many other words in the specialised fields he will eventually take up.
Thus I'm keen to quickly familiarise him with the sounds and their rules, then move into suffixes, prefixes as well as syllabication... again the challenge with syllabication is that he is already familiar with so many words, that he wouldn't really be dividing them according to the rules, just plunging straight into reading them as he remembers. And to ask him to divide it up anyway if he already knows the word will only lead to frustration because he sees it as a redundant exercise.... sigh.
I think games is my only solution to this problem... cos if anything is a game, it doesn't matter if it's easy or redundant... then winning by following the rules is what gets us there!
Moving along nicely...
Stacey is finally moving into the vowel pairs... this one will be really tricky.
The last lesson, I taught her the rules for /k/= c, k and /j/ = dge, j, g, ge. And because her first vowel pair was "oi", I also had to teach her that it came in the middle of the word, to be followed up the next lesson with "oy" which is essentially the same sound, different position.
So there we go... and because I promised her a game after, she zipped through the lesson, even right through the difficult dictation and spelling, and so we worked on more spelling without her "feeling" the burden of spelling by using the spelling cards... heh.
So we happily made words back and forth, using the new and old sounds, and examining the rules behind each word that was formed... she so enjoys manipulating the cards.
I need to keep bumping her up... her reading is getting more fluent now, even though we don't do much reading per se (meaning passages) in OG classes... so despite that her reading is improving, and that pleases and encourages me and her. All in all, good!
The last lesson, I taught her the rules for /k/= c, k and /j/ = dge, j, g, ge. And because her first vowel pair was "oi", I also had to teach her that it came in the middle of the word, to be followed up the next lesson with "oy" which is essentially the same sound, different position.
So there we go... and because I promised her a game after, she zipped through the lesson, even right through the difficult dictation and spelling, and so we worked on more spelling without her "feeling" the burden of spelling by using the spelling cards... heh.
So we happily made words back and forth, using the new and old sounds, and examining the rules behind each word that was formed... she so enjoys manipulating the cards.
I need to keep bumping her up... her reading is getting more fluent now, even though we don't do much reading per se (meaning passages) in OG classes... so despite that her reading is improving, and that pleases and encourages me and her. All in all, good!
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Well Rested...
Kasser had a much better lesson yesterday. He looked fresh and well rested, and as a result, we moved so much faster, and he could even indulge in a game of word building with the cards.
The kids are so funny... they find writing a chore - it is laborious to their dyslexic minds, and an exhausting task too... so when I get them to spell using sound cards instead of writing, they are so much more enthusiastic... and they don't realise that it is exactly the same task - minus the writing! Of course, they get to move around retrieving and putting back the cards, and because I arranged the cards in alphabetical order, he gets to practise sequencing his letters in alphabetical order as well, without even realising it! Heh.
Tomorrow is another day, another lesson. We're on to the "wh" sound already... and I think he will also struggle with it because he is unused to saying "hwh" instead of just "wh"... most Singaporeans don't do it... for example, the word "what" is often pronounced as "wat", instead of "huat"... which is the "correct" way of doing it, and also helps the children to distinguish between the words that begin with "w" and the words that begin with "wh". Heh. Hopefully he'll have a good night's rest tonight, and be ready for class tomorrow.
The kids are so funny... they find writing a chore - it is laborious to their dyslexic minds, and an exhausting task too... so when I get them to spell using sound cards instead of writing, they are so much more enthusiastic... and they don't realise that it is exactly the same task - minus the writing! Of course, they get to move around retrieving and putting back the cards, and because I arranged the cards in alphabetical order, he gets to practise sequencing his letters in alphabetical order as well, without even realising it! Heh.
Tomorrow is another day, another lesson. We're on to the "wh" sound already... and I think he will also struggle with it because he is unused to saying "hwh" instead of just "wh"... most Singaporeans don't do it... for example, the word "what" is often pronounced as "wat", instead of "huat"... which is the "correct" way of doing it, and also helps the children to distinguish between the words that begin with "w" and the words that begin with "wh". Heh. Hopefully he'll have a good night's rest tonight, and be ready for class tomorrow.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Lesson cancelled... again.
Argggghhh!
Today, the godson's mother sms'd me to ask if today's lesson could be cancelled because his friend's mother had called, and the boy wanted to attend his friend's birthday party. I'm sure she would have asked his opinion (and which 5yo would choose to have a lesson over attending a birthday party?!?) before sms-ing me.
So that means, in this last many weeks, he's still only had 2 lessons with me. At this rate, I think I won't bother continuing... she obviously doesn't think the lessons are a great priority, and I'm just wasting my time. Grrrrrrrrrr!
Today, the godson's mother sms'd me to ask if today's lesson could be cancelled because his friend's mother had called, and the boy wanted to attend his friend's birthday party. I'm sure she would have asked his opinion (and which 5yo would choose to have a lesson over attending a birthday party?!?) before sms-ing me.
So that means, in this last many weeks, he's still only had 2 lessons with me. At this rate, I think I won't bother continuing... she obviously doesn't think the lessons are a great priority, and I'm just wasting my time. Grrrrrrrrrr!
Reptiles, Rabbits and Rules...
On Saturday, Stacey went through more Reptile words, Rabbit words, and learnt a new rule regarding the -ld, -nd and -st words... so no new phonogram for her.
It occurs to me that she should also be learning the rules for the c/k/ck sounds, the j/dge/ge sounds, the ch/tch sounds and so on... because she's starting to get confused about which sound to use, as her repertoire of sounds expand. So I will be looking to see where exactly it falls in the Scope and Sequence of things, and how to incorporate it all in. I also need to look into making lessons more fun... now that I am trying to follow the OG lesson plans more closely, I find myself not having enough time to do the fun things and cover everything in the lesson plans as well. So it's going to be a little give and take. Otherwise, OG lessons become such a chore.
I bought the Go Phonics set of games and readers and stuff, so I have to start incorporating all that into the lessons. Stacey is always thrilled to play games, even if she is exercising the very same skills, just that she doesn't have to write it out on a sheet of paper. *grin*
It occurs to me that she should also be learning the rules for the c/k/ck sounds, the j/dge/ge sounds, the ch/tch sounds and so on... because she's starting to get confused about which sound to use, as her repertoire of sounds expand. So I will be looking to see where exactly it falls in the Scope and Sequence of things, and how to incorporate it all in. I also need to look into making lessons more fun... now that I am trying to follow the OG lesson plans more closely, I find myself not having enough time to do the fun things and cover everything in the lesson plans as well. So it's going to be a little give and take. Otherwise, OG lessons become such a chore.
I bought the Go Phonics set of games and readers and stuff, so I have to start incorporating all that into the lessons. Stacey is always thrilled to play games, even if she is exercising the very same skills, just that she doesn't have to write it out on a sheet of paper. *grin*
Zach's first session...
It wasn't really an OG lesson per se. We went through the Sound Deck - he knew many of the sounds already, even the higher level ones, because he could think of words that had those combinations of letters and pick out the sounds... but he still needs to learn the rules that govern those letter combinations.
I think I might just have to pick out all the different combinations to the same sounds, and expose him to many word lists for those combinations, and show him the rules for the various combinations. And once he's mastered those, then I'll do the Sound Deck drill with him, as well as checking on the rules of those sounds.
I think I also have to move on straight to prefixes and suffixes as well as syllabication rules. He can instinctively break them up already, just not without fail... but then again, many words defy the syllabication rules, so it's not a foolproof thing either.
Then I may have to move quickly on to morphology... something that is completely new to me. That I will have to learn and explore together with him... because in time, I will have to teach that to my other students too! *grin*
I also put him through the learned word list - I had to check which he could spell already, and which he could only read... and he knows most of the words there... so it's going to be interesting to see what other learned words we can pick out that are not already in Ron's lists.
It's going to be a challenge teaching Zach OG... but I'm up to it! I think...
I think I might just have to pick out all the different combinations to the same sounds, and expose him to many word lists for those combinations, and show him the rules for the various combinations. And once he's mastered those, then I'll do the Sound Deck drill with him, as well as checking on the rules of those sounds.
I think I also have to move on straight to prefixes and suffixes as well as syllabication rules. He can instinctively break them up already, just not without fail... but then again, many words defy the syllabication rules, so it's not a foolproof thing either.
Then I may have to move quickly on to morphology... something that is completely new to me. That I will have to learn and explore together with him... because in time, I will have to teach that to my other students too! *grin*
I also put him through the learned word list - I had to check which he could spell already, and which he could only read... and he knows most of the words there... so it's going to be interesting to see what other learned words we can pick out that are not already in Ron's lists.
It's going to be a challenge teaching Zach OG... but I'm up to it! I think...
Still Tired...
Kasser was still tired. When I went for his lesson on Thursday morning, he still looked like he didn't have enough sleep. From what I knew, he went to bed around 10.30pm, and his mother would wake him at around 7.30am in order to be ready for my lesson at 8.30am.
However, despite having his own room, he still insisted on sleeping in the same room as his sister, who that night, wanted to read and so switched on her light... which meant that he couldn't go to sleep, and ended up sleeping late. He apparently doesn't like sleeping alone or in the dark. If he's in his own room, he sleeps with a night light on. All night. Sigh.
How to improve at this rate? When a dyslexic child comes to class tired, his learning is impeded by his tiredness because his tired brain needs to work extra hard to process what we are trying to input into his brain - a task that is difficult even when there is enough rest. But this child is indulged to the point of being spoilt. His parents have extreme parenting styles. One scolds and chides and derides and belittles, the other smothers and pampers and waits on him hand and foot. There needs to be a balance, and both parents need to learn to modify their parenting styles abit. One needs to learn to encourage and build up with words, the other needs to learn to let go and encourage independence - afterall, the child will be 8 soon.
So we moved on to the new phonograms. That day's lesson was particularly hard, because it involved learning two sounds that Singaporean children, brought up with Singlish, are very unfamiliar with... the "th" sound in "thing" and "this"... Many many Singaporean children say "some-ting" and "dis"... they are very unfamiliar with the "th" sounds simply because it is not a sound that is found in any of the mother tongue languages... namely Mandarin, Malay or Tamil. So because the parents are often unable to accurately pronounce this sound themselves, the children grow up not hearing it, and not being made to say their words right... thus, you hear children here saying "someting", "tink! use your brain!", "I have 4 fingers and a tumb" as well as "de bus", "dey are naughty", "dis is my one" and the one that I cannot stand, "mudder, brudder, fudder"... oh gosh!
It was easy to see that he was really really exhausted and giving up by the end of the session. So much so I skipped dictation and stopped, because I knew he could not process very much more. He was guessing wildly, and not stopping to think or sound properly anymore... Sigh.
So perhaps I should not have belaboured the proper pronunciation quite as much... perhaps I should have taught the two sounds in two separate lessons... but I seriously think the child needs to have better discipline instilled in him - and not by shouting or tearing him down, but by encouragement and motivation, as well as consequences that fit his actions (or lack thereof). It's going to be tough bumping him up if he continues like that.
However, despite having his own room, he still insisted on sleeping in the same room as his sister, who that night, wanted to read and so switched on her light... which meant that he couldn't go to sleep, and ended up sleeping late. He apparently doesn't like sleeping alone or in the dark. If he's in his own room, he sleeps with a night light on. All night. Sigh.
How to improve at this rate? When a dyslexic child comes to class tired, his learning is impeded by his tiredness because his tired brain needs to work extra hard to process what we are trying to input into his brain - a task that is difficult even when there is enough rest. But this child is indulged to the point of being spoilt. His parents have extreme parenting styles. One scolds and chides and derides and belittles, the other smothers and pampers and waits on him hand and foot. There needs to be a balance, and both parents need to learn to modify their parenting styles abit. One needs to learn to encourage and build up with words, the other needs to learn to let go and encourage independence - afterall, the child will be 8 soon.
So we moved on to the new phonograms. That day's lesson was particularly hard, because it involved learning two sounds that Singaporean children, brought up with Singlish, are very unfamiliar with... the "th" sound in "thing" and "this"... Many many Singaporean children say "some-ting" and "dis"... they are very unfamiliar with the "th" sounds simply because it is not a sound that is found in any of the mother tongue languages... namely Mandarin, Malay or Tamil. So because the parents are often unable to accurately pronounce this sound themselves, the children grow up not hearing it, and not being made to say their words right... thus, you hear children here saying "someting", "tink! use your brain!", "I have 4 fingers and a tumb" as well as "de bus", "dey are naughty", "dis is my one" and the one that I cannot stand, "mudder, brudder, fudder"... oh gosh!
It was easy to see that he was really really exhausted and giving up by the end of the session. So much so I skipped dictation and stopped, because I knew he could not process very much more. He was guessing wildly, and not stopping to think or sound properly anymore... Sigh.
So perhaps I should not have belaboured the proper pronunciation quite as much... perhaps I should have taught the two sounds in two separate lessons... but I seriously think the child needs to have better discipline instilled in him - and not by shouting or tearing him down, but by encouragement and motivation, as well as consequences that fit his actions (or lack thereof). It's going to be tough bumping him up if he continues like that.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Reptile Words
Moved Stacey along in the Scope and Sequence of things... she's been stuck far too long in the basic level, in part due to our lack of time, in part due to our using most of OG sessions to tackle her Spelling tests.
I have decided that OG lessons will be strictly OG lessons. Spelling Test Preparation will just have to be on another day, at another time. Because otherwise, Stacey will never move on.
Today she moved onto Reptile Words, having done the magic-e words for the longest time. She learnt to draw a rainbow for the v-c-e vowel, as well as to swoop for bigger words so as to be able to keep track of the patterns that are in the word.
Her face lit up as she successfully dissected 3 3-syllable words, made up entirely of the vccv patterns, including reptile words. Wonderful!
I haven't moved her on to spelling the words yet. That will be my next goal. Once she's very familiar with the rabbit and reptile words, I will try spelling these words with her.
So today, she tackled a new phonogram "all", a new syllabication pattern as well as a new learned word (which admittedly she was already half familiar, so it wasn't difficult at all).
She's coming along nicely... I'm so proud of her.
Oh, and I beamed with pride when I realised that she had named her Tamagotchi pet "Bess" and had remembered to double the "s" at the end because it is a short word after a short vowel. Beautiful. And she did that without reminder or asking. I remember her saying she wanted to name her pet "bes" but somehow, I thought she'd spell it "Bes"... so when I saw that she doubled the "s", I was most pleased... : )
I have decided that OG lessons will be strictly OG lessons. Spelling Test Preparation will just have to be on another day, at another time. Because otherwise, Stacey will never move on.
Today she moved onto Reptile Words, having done the magic-e words for the longest time. She learnt to draw a rainbow for the v-c-e vowel, as well as to swoop for bigger words so as to be able to keep track of the patterns that are in the word.
Her face lit up as she successfully dissected 3 3-syllable words, made up entirely of the vccv patterns, including reptile words. Wonderful!
I haven't moved her on to spelling the words yet. That will be my next goal. Once she's very familiar with the rabbit and reptile words, I will try spelling these words with her.
So today, she tackled a new phonogram "all", a new syllabication pattern as well as a new learned word (which admittedly she was already half familiar, so it wasn't difficult at all).
She's coming along nicely... I'm so proud of her.
Oh, and I beamed with pride when I realised that she had named her Tamagotchi pet "Bess" and had remembered to double the "s" at the end because it is a short word after a short vowel. Beautiful. And she did that without reminder or asking. I remember her saying she wanted to name her pet "bes" but somehow, I thought she'd spell it "Bes"... so when I saw that she doubled the "s", I was most pleased... : )
Big Boy...
Although Kasser is already in P2, I'm still using the tri-lined sheets to get him to write better and form his letters properly. He's got weird habits of writing from bottom up, and I'm trying to correct that. Still, since he's already 7+, it's hard to break his habits.... but break-able, they are.
I think I'm keen to break the habit of mis-forming his letters because he still gets confused as to how certain letters are written. So I figure, if he writes everything properly now, it'll become more automatic, and he will be less confused. Even now, he'll stop to ask if a certain letter begins at the head or belt line... and he's never learnt to use the tri-lines in school it seems.
That's a pet peeve I have with the kindergarten system now. They don't place emphasis on handwriting and letter formation, and allow the children to write in just plain boxes... as a result, the children grow up not knowing how to form decent letters, and their words "fly" every which way... a "j" can sit up together with a "t" instead of having its tail swing down below the line and so on. And they then get confused as to the difference between an uppercase letter and a lowercase letter, which then creates problems when they are doing editing for punctuation, because they have no idea which letters are supposed to go below the foot-line, and which letters have to stay on the foot line and so on.
In the last lesson though, I tried the main sound deck with him for the first time, and he did fine. He had only a little trouble remembering the keyword for "w"... but only because he still isn't familiar with "wagon". I'm thinking I might want to change the keyword for "w" and "i" (igloo) because he isn't familiar with those words and they don't serve the purpose of unlocking the sounds for him.
Tomorrow I'll see him again, and I'm moving on... using the main sound deck... hopefully in a few more lessons, his handwriting will have improved and he'll be more confident in forming his letters correctly... and I can move him on to the "big boy" sheets. I also hope to "bump him up" as Ron would often say... seeing as to how he is already in P2. I want to start syllabication soon... and now that he's finished all his short vowel sounds, he can start on closed syllables. But I need him to be a little more stable with his short vowel sounds first...
He was very tired during the last lesson - he said his sister woke him up earlier than he was due to be up... his sister can be quite... how shall I put it?... unthinking... and I think the mother has little control over her in the sense that the mom had already told Lindy (the sister) not to wake Kasser up, yet, she did. So I sent an SMS to their father today, in part to remind that I am going for lesson tomorrow instead of Friday, in part to ask that Lindy be reminded to let Kasser sleep so that he will be well rested for the lesson. The reply that came back? "I take care of that." LOL. I think Lindy will probably leave her brother alone tomorrow morning.
People don't realise that for Dyslexics, it is physically tiring to read and write. And I've seen it in both Zach and Stacey... so Stacey in particular has to be well rested and ready for lessons... and in order for her to do well, she has to experience success. She (and indeed Kasser too) gets discouraged too easily... so I must remember that while I'm trying to bump them up, they also need to work at their own pace....
I think I'm keen to break the habit of mis-forming his letters because he still gets confused as to how certain letters are written. So I figure, if he writes everything properly now, it'll become more automatic, and he will be less confused. Even now, he'll stop to ask if a certain letter begins at the head or belt line... and he's never learnt to use the tri-lines in school it seems.
That's a pet peeve I have with the kindergarten system now. They don't place emphasis on handwriting and letter formation, and allow the children to write in just plain boxes... as a result, the children grow up not knowing how to form decent letters, and their words "fly" every which way... a "j" can sit up together with a "t" instead of having its tail swing down below the line and so on. And they then get confused as to the difference between an uppercase letter and a lowercase letter, which then creates problems when they are doing editing for punctuation, because they have no idea which letters are supposed to go below the foot-line, and which letters have to stay on the foot line and so on.
In the last lesson though, I tried the main sound deck with him for the first time, and he did fine. He had only a little trouble remembering the keyword for "w"... but only because he still isn't familiar with "wagon". I'm thinking I might want to change the keyword for "w" and "i" (igloo) because he isn't familiar with those words and they don't serve the purpose of unlocking the sounds for him.
Tomorrow I'll see him again, and I'm moving on... using the main sound deck... hopefully in a few more lessons, his handwriting will have improved and he'll be more confident in forming his letters correctly... and I can move him on to the "big boy" sheets. I also hope to "bump him up" as Ron would often say... seeing as to how he is already in P2. I want to start syllabication soon... and now that he's finished all his short vowel sounds, he can start on closed syllables. But I need him to be a little more stable with his short vowel sounds first...
He was very tired during the last lesson - he said his sister woke him up earlier than he was due to be up... his sister can be quite... how shall I put it?... unthinking... and I think the mother has little control over her in the sense that the mom had already told Lindy (the sister) not to wake Kasser up, yet, she did. So I sent an SMS to their father today, in part to remind that I am going for lesson tomorrow instead of Friday, in part to ask that Lindy be reminded to let Kasser sleep so that he will be well rested for the lesson. The reply that came back? "I take care of that." LOL. I think Lindy will probably leave her brother alone tomorrow morning.
People don't realise that for Dyslexics, it is physically tiring to read and write. And I've seen it in both Zach and Stacey... so Stacey in particular has to be well rested and ready for lessons... and in order for her to do well, she has to experience success. She (and indeed Kasser too) gets discouraged too easily... so I must remember that while I'm trying to bump them up, they also need to work at their own pace....
Monday, February 2, 2009
The Special Needs Officer (Dyslexia)...
Today, went down to Zachary's school to meet the Special Needs Officer (Dyslexia) aka SNOD, mainly to sign the forms for application for the exemption from Chinese. She was asking me if he had passed Chinese in previous years, to which I literally laughed out loud... and told her with a twinkle in my eye that he had never crossed the 40% mark...
She told me that if that was the case, then it was almost guaranteed that he would be able to get the approval for exemption... that there were cases of children who were even passing (albeit only in the low 50% range) who were also given the exemption approval.
So in a few weeks, Zach will officially be exempted from chinese exams from the rest of his life... much to my relief, as well as the relief of all his chinese teachers (and unbeknownst to all would-have-been-future-chinese-teachers) present and future... heh.
{I'm listening to my brood of 3 children being taught chinese using radicals by the children's chinese teacher. They build on the words adding parts, going from ren to da to tai and so on... amazing. How I wish they could just do this for tuition, instead of slogging over Spelling lists and such what nots. Ah well. I think the tutor did not know what she was taking on when she volunteered to have all 3 children join in... LOL.}
Anyway, I digress. The SNO told me that Zach would be taken out every Friday during the 3 period Chinese lesson to do a group session on Comprehension... something that he needs. I think he will enjoy himself... I hope... but probably anything is better than attending Chinese lessons... LOL. So here begins our journey as an officially diagnosed Dyslexic. : )
She told me that if that was the case, then it was almost guaranteed that he would be able to get the approval for exemption... that there were cases of children who were even passing (albeit only in the low 50% range) who were also given the exemption approval.
So in a few weeks, Zach will officially be exempted from chinese exams from the rest of his life... much to my relief, as well as the relief of all his chinese teachers (and unbeknownst to all would-have-been-future-chinese-teachers) present and future... heh.
{I'm listening to my brood of 3 children being taught chinese using radicals by the children's chinese teacher. They build on the words adding parts, going from ren to da to tai and so on... amazing. How I wish they could just do this for tuition, instead of slogging over Spelling lists and such what nots. Ah well. I think the tutor did not know what she was taking on when she volunteered to have all 3 children join in... LOL.}
Anyway, I digress. The SNO told me that Zach would be taken out every Friday during the 3 period Chinese lesson to do a group session on Comprehension... something that he needs. I think he will enjoy himself... I hope... but probably anything is better than attending Chinese lessons... LOL. So here begins our journey as an officially diagnosed Dyslexic. : )
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Advanced... but not quite...
Sat Zach through an informal assessment today... his first encounter with OG in person.
He actually did quite well, especially with the real words. There were a few that he couldn't read, but weirdly enough, some were actually quite simple words. He even managed some of the nonsense words well enough, though there were quite a few he was inclined to change them back into more familiar sounding words as well.
Like the EP said, his word attack skills were weak, and this showed up particularly when trying to spell words he had not seen many times before.
He also took a while to understand what to do, when I was testing him on his ability to manipulate sounds... we started by having him change the first sounds of words, like from cat to bat, telling him to change /k/ to /b/.... but later when I switched and changed the last sound, like from cat to cab, he knew he had to use the /b/ sound, but he ended up still switching the first instead of the last sound. After two mistakes, I knew I had to stop and really explain until he got it before I went on, because I knew he could manipulate the sounds... he was just having trouble wrapping his mind around the task... so after that, he scored full marks.
He already knows many of the sounds like vowels pairs and consonant pairs... but I still need to get him up to par with the rules and keywords that come with them... but I think I can skip quite a bit and plunge into the thick of things. Now to familiarise him with the OG lesson structure and what is required of him.
It's going to be an interesting time, because I've not been this high up on the OG scope and sequence on a practicial level as yet.
He actually did quite well, especially with the real words. There were a few that he couldn't read, but weirdly enough, some were actually quite simple words. He even managed some of the nonsense words well enough, though there were quite a few he was inclined to change them back into more familiar sounding words as well.
Like the EP said, his word attack skills were weak, and this showed up particularly when trying to spell words he had not seen many times before.
He also took a while to understand what to do, when I was testing him on his ability to manipulate sounds... we started by having him change the first sounds of words, like from cat to bat, telling him to change /k/ to /b/.... but later when I switched and changed the last sound, like from cat to cab, he knew he had to use the /b/ sound, but he ended up still switching the first instead of the last sound. After two mistakes, I knew I had to stop and really explain until he got it before I went on, because I knew he could manipulate the sounds... he was just having trouble wrapping his mind around the task... so after that, he scored full marks.
He already knows many of the sounds like vowels pairs and consonant pairs... but I still need to get him up to par with the rules and keywords that come with them... but I think I can skip quite a bit and plunge into the thick of things. Now to familiarise him with the OG lesson structure and what is required of him.
It's going to be an interesting time, because I've not been this high up on the OG scope and sequence on a practicial level as yet.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Being Accomodated...
Stacey's teacher just called. It's the end of Week 4 now, and she and the EL HOD have finally decided to accomodate Stacey's needs by giving her only 5 spelling words instead of 10, in addition to the dictation passage that she has to learn.
I also requested that Stacey's teacher move the Spelling Day to Tuesday or Wednesday in order for Stacey to have more time to learn her spelling because having it on a Monday meant that she had to learn it way before and hope that she still remembered it by Monday since we don't have any time on Sunday to really learn it... and now Stacey's teacher has told me that next week onwards, the Spelling will be moved to Tuesday!!! Woohoo!!! That would help make all the difference in the world! Yay!
Her teacher this year is a little less systematic though... in that last year's teacher chose the 5 words based on words that Stacey would more likely need... but this year's teacher is just picking the top row (her words are organised on her list in two rows) for her to learn. Guess that will do too...
All in all, good news!!!!
I also requested that Stacey's teacher move the Spelling Day to Tuesday or Wednesday in order for Stacey to have more time to learn her spelling because having it on a Monday meant that she had to learn it way before and hope that she still remembered it by Monday since we don't have any time on Sunday to really learn it... and now Stacey's teacher has told me that next week onwards, the Spelling will be moved to Tuesday!!! Woohoo!!! That would help make all the difference in the world! Yay!
Her teacher this year is a little less systematic though... in that last year's teacher chose the 5 words based on words that Stacey would more likely need... but this year's teacher is just picking the top row (her words are organised on her list in two rows) for her to learn. Guess that will do too...
All in all, good news!!!!
Finally completed the "baby" sounds
Yay, today Kasser has finally completed the first 26 "baby" sounds... next lesson I hope to move him onto bigger things... so so far, he has 26 sounds and 3 rules under his belt, together with new coping techniques like skywriting, tracing and fingerspelling.
Vowels still present quite a bit of a struggle for him. Today during Auditory Drill, he wrote "e" instead of "i" everytime he heard the short /i/ sound... and I had to check him and ask him to check his sound bank to see if he even had the "e" letter there.
He was quite tired today... tired dyslexics learn far less than well rested ones. He also woke up late and was not ready when I turned up for class today.
Still... I haven't been doing a full OG lesson with him so far... not enough learned words and so on to do dictation... plus I was crashing the sounds... next week I'm going to try him on a full OG lesson plan... complete with learned words and words for spelling for the new phonemes as well. And I also hope to start some reading... we'll see.
Still, not bad for the 4th lesson....
Vowels still present quite a bit of a struggle for him. Today during Auditory Drill, he wrote "e" instead of "i" everytime he heard the short /i/ sound... and I had to check him and ask him to check his sound bank to see if he even had the "e" letter there.
He was quite tired today... tired dyslexics learn far less than well rested ones. He also woke up late and was not ready when I turned up for class today.
Still... I haven't been doing a full OG lesson with him so far... not enough learned words and so on to do dictation... plus I was crashing the sounds... next week I'm going to try him on a full OG lesson plan... complete with learned words and words for spelling for the new phonemes as well. And I also hope to start some reading... we'll see.
Still, not bad for the 4th lesson....
Friday, January 23, 2009
The Uninitiated - Zachary
Zachary is my eldest. At 8+, he is in Primary 3 this year. I never dreamed he'd be diagnosed as Dyslexic.
Zach zoomed through his Phonics program, which he completed in just 10 months. He was in K2 when he began with the teacher who taught Montesorri Phonics from her home, and he blazed through the word lists that she gave for practice.
Even as he went through Kindergarten, he had very little (noticeable) problems with his worksheets when it came to English. Maths was significantly more of a struggle, while Chinese was non-existent (his command of it, that is... not the homework. Homework he had plenty of...)
So as he entered into Primary School, his struggles with all things arbitrary and his weakness in Mathematical concepts became more obvious. He struggled with simple concepts that came naturally to me growing up. His younger sister would often blurt out answers way ahead of him, and this despite the fact that she was one whole academic year behind.
Chinese was a mystery to him... he couldn't, even at P2, string a sentence together... he had so little vocab that his youngest sister way surpassed him in terms of vocabulary and understanding Chinese.
So even as I was sharing with the Educational Psychologist about his difficulties (when I was seeing her for Stacey's problems), she noted that it was a very unusual thing for a child to not pick up at least a little Chinese... despite having been in school since he was 3 and learning the language from 20mths old, when he attended childcare.
End of last year, he went to see the Educational Psychologist, because I was getting increasingly frustrated at his inability to communicate information clearly, and his apparent inability to remember what teachers had said in school. Compounded by the fact that they had a nightmare of a teacher in P2, his struggles became glaringly obvious. I thought he was only Dyscalculic. Or that maybe he had Chinese Dyslexia.
But it turns out that he is dyslexic. He also has a great visual memory. Which is how he had been coping all this while. He had not been decoding words or blending them. He had memorised how they were spelt. And he used his memory for the words that he could read. So he struggled this year when he was faced with Science and its unique set of vocabulary, never before encountered.
He also has other issues, like a poor verbal memory - he literally is unable to remember what has been said to him, and retains only about half what other people are able to retain. Given the passing of time, he only retains about a third.
All this explained why he had always been the hands-on kid I knew him to be. He also has some social issues it seems... being too literal in his interpretation of things, he is unable to fit in perfectly. He used to get teased or "bullied" by "friends" - they would tell him tall stories and laugh at him because he believed them... he always fell for their stories hook, line and sinker.
So it has been recommended that we begin OG lessons. My 4th student. One I never imagined would need OG.
And honestly, I don't really know where to begin. Getting him to blend and sound out words instead of just relying on his memory will be, in itself, a challenge. Maybe we just have to use more non-words instead to force him to sound out instead of drawing from his memory bank. I really need to sit down and figure out this one.
Zach zoomed through his Phonics program, which he completed in just 10 months. He was in K2 when he began with the teacher who taught Montesorri Phonics from her home, and he blazed through the word lists that she gave for practice.
Even as he went through Kindergarten, he had very little (noticeable) problems with his worksheets when it came to English. Maths was significantly more of a struggle, while Chinese was non-existent (his command of it, that is... not the homework. Homework he had plenty of...)
So as he entered into Primary School, his struggles with all things arbitrary and his weakness in Mathematical concepts became more obvious. He struggled with simple concepts that came naturally to me growing up. His younger sister would often blurt out answers way ahead of him, and this despite the fact that she was one whole academic year behind.
Chinese was a mystery to him... he couldn't, even at P2, string a sentence together... he had so little vocab that his youngest sister way surpassed him in terms of vocabulary and understanding Chinese.
So even as I was sharing with the Educational Psychologist about his difficulties (when I was seeing her for Stacey's problems), she noted that it was a very unusual thing for a child to not pick up at least a little Chinese... despite having been in school since he was 3 and learning the language from 20mths old, when he attended childcare.
End of last year, he went to see the Educational Psychologist, because I was getting increasingly frustrated at his inability to communicate information clearly, and his apparent inability to remember what teachers had said in school. Compounded by the fact that they had a nightmare of a teacher in P2, his struggles became glaringly obvious. I thought he was only Dyscalculic. Or that maybe he had Chinese Dyslexia.
But it turns out that he is dyslexic. He also has a great visual memory. Which is how he had been coping all this while. He had not been decoding words or blending them. He had memorised how they were spelt. And he used his memory for the words that he could read. So he struggled this year when he was faced with Science and its unique set of vocabulary, never before encountered.
He also has other issues, like a poor verbal memory - he literally is unable to remember what has been said to him, and retains only about half what other people are able to retain. Given the passing of time, he only retains about a third.
All this explained why he had always been the hands-on kid I knew him to be. He also has some social issues it seems... being too literal in his interpretation of things, he is unable to fit in perfectly. He used to get teased or "bullied" by "friends" - they would tell him tall stories and laugh at him because he believed them... he always fell for their stories hook, line and sinker.
So it has been recommended that we begin OG lessons. My 4th student. One I never imagined would need OG.
And honestly, I don't really know where to begin. Getting him to blend and sound out words instead of just relying on his memory will be, in itself, a challenge. Maybe we just have to use more non-words instead to force him to sound out instead of drawing from his memory bank. I really need to sit down and figure out this one.
First Paying Student - Kasser
Kasser is an almost 8yo, currently in Primary Two. A church counsellor, who had been visiting the family to provide support and advice and follow-up approached me and asked if I would take a look to see if I could help this young man.
Although his mother is a very conscientious lady, reading to him and trying her best to raise a reader, helping him in schoolwork and basically guiding him closely, he has failed to learn to read fluently and at his level.
From the little that I understood, the family had tried to get him help, asking the school for a referral to an Educational Psychologist, yet, the school was unwilling, saying that Kasser was only slow, not learning disabled. They felt that all he needed was time to catch up with his peers.
On my first visit, I found a young man, very much alert and alive, yet shy and introverted at first. His father was quick to call him lazy, lamenting that he would not try and learn independently, saying that he wouldn't learn rather than couldn't learn.
I spent about an hour with him that morning, doing an informal assessment. I found a young man who, despite phonics instructions from young, still did not know his sounds. He knew only one of the 5 short vowel sounds, and many consonants were also unfamiliar to him. Like Donny, he found some sounds difficult to produce, possibly having learnt them wrong all his life. Writing was also a slight problem... formation of letters were odd, made worse by his left-handedness. When asked to write the alphabet in only uppercase, he got confused... he showed problems with sequencing.
Blending was easy for him if the single consonant was placed in front... but too many single consonants and he got confused. This was especially so if he was unfamiliar with the word. He had no reversals though, so that was a good thing, but he had little idea how to use the "head-line", "belt-line" and "foot-line" to help him in forming his letters. Like Zach and Stacey, his "j" stood up on the footline and extended all the way to the headline, instead of starting from the beltline and extending below the footline.
We've had 3 lessons so far and he is moving nicely along. With skywriting, fingerspelling and tracing under his belt, he is quickly picking up the sounds and keywords. He still struggles with the short vowel sounds a, u and i... and often confuses them when he is in a rush to finish forming the word... but he is better able now to self-correct... a wonderful thing. He's also had the rush of being able to spell 5-letter words entirely by sounding them out... an achievement that impressed his mother. Previously, all spelling words had to be drilled, letter by letter tediously, and caused parent and child much grief.
I hope to complete the Baby Deck real soon... by the next lesson if possible, although he still has two short vowels to contend with - "o" and the dreaded "e". Singaporean children seem to have a major problem with the short vowel sounds "a" and "e", simply because in Singlish, the two sounds are rather similar, if at all different. In relaxed conversation, even when I say "pat" and "pet", they sound the same... so it's difficult for them to hear and produce the two different sounds easily.
It's only been 2 weeks since I first met him, but already, the child is blossoming with a newfound confidence in himself. So wonderful to see.
Although his mother is a very conscientious lady, reading to him and trying her best to raise a reader, helping him in schoolwork and basically guiding him closely, he has failed to learn to read fluently and at his level.
From the little that I understood, the family had tried to get him help, asking the school for a referral to an Educational Psychologist, yet, the school was unwilling, saying that Kasser was only slow, not learning disabled. They felt that all he needed was time to catch up with his peers.
On my first visit, I found a young man, very much alert and alive, yet shy and introverted at first. His father was quick to call him lazy, lamenting that he would not try and learn independently, saying that he wouldn't learn rather than couldn't learn.
I spent about an hour with him that morning, doing an informal assessment. I found a young man who, despite phonics instructions from young, still did not know his sounds. He knew only one of the 5 short vowel sounds, and many consonants were also unfamiliar to him. Like Donny, he found some sounds difficult to produce, possibly having learnt them wrong all his life. Writing was also a slight problem... formation of letters were odd, made worse by his left-handedness. When asked to write the alphabet in only uppercase, he got confused... he showed problems with sequencing.
Blending was easy for him if the single consonant was placed in front... but too many single consonants and he got confused. This was especially so if he was unfamiliar with the word. He had no reversals though, so that was a good thing, but he had little idea how to use the "head-line", "belt-line" and "foot-line" to help him in forming his letters. Like Zach and Stacey, his "j" stood up on the footline and extended all the way to the headline, instead of starting from the beltline and extending below the footline.
We've had 3 lessons so far and he is moving nicely along. With skywriting, fingerspelling and tracing under his belt, he is quickly picking up the sounds and keywords. He still struggles with the short vowel sounds a, u and i... and often confuses them when he is in a rush to finish forming the word... but he is better able now to self-correct... a wonderful thing. He's also had the rush of being able to spell 5-letter words entirely by sounding them out... an achievement that impressed his mother. Previously, all spelling words had to be drilled, letter by letter tediously, and caused parent and child much grief.
I hope to complete the Baby Deck real soon... by the next lesson if possible, although he still has two short vowels to contend with - "o" and the dreaded "e". Singaporean children seem to have a major problem with the short vowel sounds "a" and "e", simply because in Singlish, the two sounds are rather similar, if at all different. In relaxed conversation, even when I say "pat" and "pet", they sound the same... so it's difficult for them to hear and produce the two different sounds easily.
It's only been 2 weeks since I first met him, but already, the child is blossoming with a newfound confidence in himself. So wonderful to see.
Starting with the Godson
The Godson, Donny (not his real name), is now 5+, going on 6 at the end of the year. He is currently in his 2nd year of Kindergarten.
He comes from a not so well-to-do background... parents are not superbly educated, and find managing their finances a great challenge. As a result, his education has been of a sub-standard level. From the time he was little, he was looked after by a nanny - an elderly lady who is not very educated and speaks only Chinese. He only started attending Childcare a while back, and even then his learning can be described as slow at best.
His teachers complain that the child writes badly - that is, his handwriting is atrocious and very untidy. His letter formation is also weak. He is falling behind in terms of reading and spelling... a situation made worse by the lack of intelligent conversation (as opposed to very functional interaction between caregiver and child, mostly consisting of instructions and scolding) outside of school.
So when I learnt about his situation, I volunteered to go to his house once a week, seeing as to how his home is near my in-law's place... and I've since had 2 lessons with him... the pace is slow. The child is unused to speaking good English, and so, the sounds are so unfamiliar. It takes a great deal of effort to curl his tongue around the sounds and produce a halfway decent sound.
An initial informal assessment shows a child who is unable to blend, and does not seem to have any notion of blending, despite having been in Kindergarten 1 last year. He doesn't know many of the basic sounds of the vowels and consonants. The words that he read successfully, he recognised by sight, not the results of phonemic awareness. He cannot consistently differentiate between a capital letter and a small letter (or uppercase and lowercase letter). His letter formation is awkward, and has to be re-taught.
So in the first lesson, we started on just the first 4 sounds in the OG scope and sequence, developed by Ron Y... and did another 4 in the second lesson. I also incorporated handwriting, as well as some blending and reading using the cards. To motivate and encourage practice, I got him to make his own set of sound cards... he possesses 8 so far. He picked up the keywords readily enough, although he struggled with "wagon", not having seen one in Singapore. But it's a start.
He also picked up the notion of the "headline", "belt-line" and "foot-line" readily enough, although it looked like he might have learnt some of it in school. So we plod along. Progress is slow, in part due to the only-once-a-week lessons, in part due to the fact that there is little home support.
He comes from a not so well-to-do background... parents are not superbly educated, and find managing their finances a great challenge. As a result, his education has been of a sub-standard level. From the time he was little, he was looked after by a nanny - an elderly lady who is not very educated and speaks only Chinese. He only started attending Childcare a while back, and even then his learning can be described as slow at best.
His teachers complain that the child writes badly - that is, his handwriting is atrocious and very untidy. His letter formation is also weak. He is falling behind in terms of reading and spelling... a situation made worse by the lack of intelligent conversation (as opposed to very functional interaction between caregiver and child, mostly consisting of instructions and scolding) outside of school.
So when I learnt about his situation, I volunteered to go to his house once a week, seeing as to how his home is near my in-law's place... and I've since had 2 lessons with him... the pace is slow. The child is unused to speaking good English, and so, the sounds are so unfamiliar. It takes a great deal of effort to curl his tongue around the sounds and produce a halfway decent sound.
An initial informal assessment shows a child who is unable to blend, and does not seem to have any notion of blending, despite having been in Kindergarten 1 last year. He doesn't know many of the basic sounds of the vowels and consonants. The words that he read successfully, he recognised by sight, not the results of phonemic awareness. He cannot consistently differentiate between a capital letter and a small letter (or uppercase and lowercase letter). His letter formation is awkward, and has to be re-taught.
So in the first lesson, we started on just the first 4 sounds in the OG scope and sequence, developed by Ron Y... and did another 4 in the second lesson. I also incorporated handwriting, as well as some blending and reading using the cards. To motivate and encourage practice, I got him to make his own set of sound cards... he possesses 8 so far. He picked up the keywords readily enough, although he struggled with "wagon", not having seen one in Singapore. But it's a start.
He also picked up the notion of the "headline", "belt-line" and "foot-line" readily enough, although it looked like he might have learnt some of it in school. So we plod along. Progress is slow, in part due to the only-once-a-week lessons, in part due to the fact that there is little home support.
How it all began...
This blog will chronicle my newly hatched journey in the Orton-Gillingham method of teaching Dyslexic children...
When Stacey, my middle child, was in Kindergarten, I wondered why she was struggling so. She seemed bright enough... able to out-talk and sometimes out-wit those older than her, yet, she couldn't seem to get her hands (or tongue, or mind) around sounds. I sent her for Phonics lesson with her ex-kindergarten teacher who specialised in teaching Montesorri style phonics from home. My son, Zach, had gone to her and was doing well, so I started her too when she was in her first year of Kindergarten. At that time, she was only 4, for she is a Nov baby, and while her peers in her class were already 5 or reaching their 5th birthday soon, she was, in reality, only 4y1m when she started life in K1.
Zach seemed to zoom through his Phonics... he read the lists easily enough... and seemed to learn the sounds easily enough, and he didn't seem to have problems reading. He could even read long complicated words that he encountered in his books and worksheets and school life. No big deal. Sure, occasionally he got words wrong and read them weird, but after a quick correction, he was usually spot on after that.
Stacey, on the other hand, struggled. She struggled to rhyme. She struggled to sound letters. She struggled with vowels. Whatever she didn't know, she guessed. Sometimes she was right on target. Many times she was outrageously wrong. She relied on the pictures in her books to give her clues as to what the words might say. And because half the time she got it right, the other half of the time, those who taught her felt that she was playing the fool... that she was not concentrating, that she was not trying hard enough. Her writing was wonky... often she reversed letters... b d p q... even the s in her name got turned around. She would reverse her numbers too... often confusing 2 with 5, and writing 3 so that it faced the other way. My teacher-trained mind shouted out that something had to be wrong... yet when I brought up the suggestion that perhaps she needed special support, her educators felt that I was making a mountain out of a molehill... that she couldn't be a special needs child... she was too bright to be one... she was not slow. No, she was just lazy or not taking her work seriously.
In 2007, when Zach started Primary School, I quit my job as a full-time teacher to stay home with my kids. This led to much more time with the children, and I saw how hard Stacey struggled with her reading... sometime in June, a friend who was also my children's godmother, suggested that perhaps Stacey might be dyslexic... her own son had been described as one by a friend... and had put him through an informal OG assessment which had surfaced his problems. FF, the children's godma, went through a course to be trained as an OG teacher... and offered to take a look at Stacey after her training.
So started our encounter with OG. Stacey began weekly sessions with FF, who felt that she needed the support. I stopped Stacey's lessons with the Montesorri Phonics teacher - those lessons were putting her under tremendous pressure and stress... it was not doing her any good. Under FF's kind encouragement and a method of learning that suited Stacey's learning style and needs, Stacey flourished. In no time, Stace went from a child who studiously avoided books and who declared that "I cannot read, only korkor can!" to a happier and more confident child who said "Mummy, I will read to meimei (younger sister)...". For half a year, Stace attended weekly sessions with FF, and she began to deal better with worksheets and work... learning to use her sounds and blend more systematically. Her writing and awareness of letter formation improved, and her reversals lessened.
Encouraged by her progress, and realising that her lessons with FF couldn't extend beyond that year (for she would soon go on to Primary School and only come home at around 2pm - a time when FF started her private piano classes at her home), I quickly made the decision to join the OG Associate Program offered by the Orton-Gillingham Centre, taught by Ron Yoshimoto. It didn't come cheap... but it was well worth the investment.
In Dec 2007, I attended the 2 week full-time course, and came away enlightened and raring to go. I picked up where FF left off with Stacey (who by this time had had about 16 or so lessons with FF) and tried to continue. However, I decided also to have Stacey seen by an Educational Psychologist, to see if she could be assessed and possibly obtain an exemption from Chinese Mandarin Testing in school, seeing as to how she was truly struggling with Mandarin at that time.
Thus, in order for her dyslexia not to be masked by her OG training, I stopped her lessons for 2+ months, until she had her assessment in March. Unfortunately, it was no soon enough. It was revealed that Stacey had a high average non-verbal IQ, but anything that had to do with language was brought down to just within the Average range... but the Average scores were not good enough to have her formally diagnosed as having Dyslexia... despite the Psychologist feeling that she does present as being dyslexic... so we wait. Meanwhile, we continue with her lessons... the first year has been somewhat rocky and inconsistent - in part due to our having moved out of the house for almost 4 months then the move back in, in part due to my just settling into the role of a Stay-Home mom.
So right now, Stacey is still not very far from where she left off in terms of Scope and Sequence with FF, having progressed only by a few sounds and into Rabbit words (under Syllabication), but she has made great leaps and bounds in terms of coping with spelling thanks to techniques like finger-spelling and sky-writing.
This year, I intend to make her OG lessons with me a priority, and try to have lessons with her twice a week. Something else may have to give... I have not decided what... but we definitely need more time for her to work on OG.
When Stacey, my middle child, was in Kindergarten, I wondered why she was struggling so. She seemed bright enough... able to out-talk and sometimes out-wit those older than her, yet, she couldn't seem to get her hands (or tongue, or mind) around sounds. I sent her for Phonics lesson with her ex-kindergarten teacher who specialised in teaching Montesorri style phonics from home. My son, Zach, had gone to her and was doing well, so I started her too when she was in her first year of Kindergarten. At that time, she was only 4, for she is a Nov baby, and while her peers in her class were already 5 or reaching their 5th birthday soon, she was, in reality, only 4y1m when she started life in K1.
Zach seemed to zoom through his Phonics... he read the lists easily enough... and seemed to learn the sounds easily enough, and he didn't seem to have problems reading. He could even read long complicated words that he encountered in his books and worksheets and school life. No big deal. Sure, occasionally he got words wrong and read them weird, but after a quick correction, he was usually spot on after that.
Stacey, on the other hand, struggled. She struggled to rhyme. She struggled to sound letters. She struggled with vowels. Whatever she didn't know, she guessed. Sometimes she was right on target. Many times she was outrageously wrong. She relied on the pictures in her books to give her clues as to what the words might say. And because half the time she got it right, the other half of the time, those who taught her felt that she was playing the fool... that she was not concentrating, that she was not trying hard enough. Her writing was wonky... often she reversed letters... b d p q... even the s in her name got turned around. She would reverse her numbers too... often confusing 2 with 5, and writing 3 so that it faced the other way. My teacher-trained mind shouted out that something had to be wrong... yet when I brought up the suggestion that perhaps she needed special support, her educators felt that I was making a mountain out of a molehill... that she couldn't be a special needs child... she was too bright to be one... she was not slow. No, she was just lazy or not taking her work seriously.
In 2007, when Zach started Primary School, I quit my job as a full-time teacher to stay home with my kids. This led to much more time with the children, and I saw how hard Stacey struggled with her reading... sometime in June, a friend who was also my children's godmother, suggested that perhaps Stacey might be dyslexic... her own son had been described as one by a friend... and had put him through an informal OG assessment which had surfaced his problems. FF, the children's godma, went through a course to be trained as an OG teacher... and offered to take a look at Stacey after her training.
So started our encounter with OG. Stacey began weekly sessions with FF, who felt that she needed the support. I stopped Stacey's lessons with the Montesorri Phonics teacher - those lessons were putting her under tremendous pressure and stress... it was not doing her any good. Under FF's kind encouragement and a method of learning that suited Stacey's learning style and needs, Stacey flourished. In no time, Stace went from a child who studiously avoided books and who declared that "I cannot read, only korkor can!" to a happier and more confident child who said "Mummy, I will read to meimei (younger sister)...". For half a year, Stace attended weekly sessions with FF, and she began to deal better with worksheets and work... learning to use her sounds and blend more systematically. Her writing and awareness of letter formation improved, and her reversals lessened.
Encouraged by her progress, and realising that her lessons with FF couldn't extend beyond that year (for she would soon go on to Primary School and only come home at around 2pm - a time when FF started her private piano classes at her home), I quickly made the decision to join the OG Associate Program offered by the Orton-Gillingham Centre, taught by Ron Yoshimoto. It didn't come cheap... but it was well worth the investment.
In Dec 2007, I attended the 2 week full-time course, and came away enlightened and raring to go. I picked up where FF left off with Stacey (who by this time had had about 16 or so lessons with FF) and tried to continue. However, I decided also to have Stacey seen by an Educational Psychologist, to see if she could be assessed and possibly obtain an exemption from Chinese Mandarin Testing in school, seeing as to how she was truly struggling with Mandarin at that time.
Thus, in order for her dyslexia not to be masked by her OG training, I stopped her lessons for 2+ months, until she had her assessment in March. Unfortunately, it was no soon enough. It was revealed that Stacey had a high average non-verbal IQ, but anything that had to do with language was brought down to just within the Average range... but the Average scores were not good enough to have her formally diagnosed as having Dyslexia... despite the Psychologist feeling that she does present as being dyslexic... so we wait. Meanwhile, we continue with her lessons... the first year has been somewhat rocky and inconsistent - in part due to our having moved out of the house for almost 4 months then the move back in, in part due to my just settling into the role of a Stay-Home mom.
So right now, Stacey is still not very far from where she left off in terms of Scope and Sequence with FF, having progressed only by a few sounds and into Rabbit words (under Syllabication), but she has made great leaps and bounds in terms of coping with spelling thanks to techniques like finger-spelling and sky-writing.
This year, I intend to make her OG lessons with me a priority, and try to have lessons with her twice a week. Something else may have to give... I have not decided what... but we definitely need more time for her to work on OG.
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