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.

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...

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.

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...

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.

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

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.

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...

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!

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!

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.

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!

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*

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...

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.

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... : )

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....

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. : )