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.
Showing posts with label Signs of Struggle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Signs of Struggle. Show all posts
Monday, September 21, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
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, 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.
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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