2nd Optometrist Appointment

Tomorrow Stacey goes for her 2nd appointment with the Optometrist, to use the Intuitive Colorimeter to determine the exact shade she needs for her Irlen glasses. She's excited and so am I... more because I'm hoping that this will make a difference to her reading speed and her comfort with reading books.

We are going with the lenses simply because since it was obvious the overlays helped, this will hopefully help her in reading things off the board, off the computer screen as well as when she is doing her exams and having to write on white paper as well. If her brain doesn't have to work so hard compensating for the perceptual "interference", then it can apply itself to the task of comprehension and expression better, I suppose. In other countries, you can request that the schools support you by printing on coloured paper (notes, test papers and so on), but I think for that to happen in Singapore, you'd need to find yourself a teacher who is willing to go that far out for you... and while there are many many lovely teachers in her school, I wouldn't dream of asking them to go to that extent just for one child, when I can simply help her by giving her the filters right there in front of her eyes.

So far, she's preferred books where the print are nice and big and the line spacing is also far apart. This means that she normally ends up with books for younger readers. I've tried buying her books meant for kids her age, but she dislikes certain kinds of print... font that are too small, or the words look too "crowded"... she has steadfastly avoided all such print. So I'm hoping that with the Irlen glasses, we can "graduate" to books meant for bigger girls, and she can then be exposed to more ideas and sentence structures and hopefully that will help her more in her writing and expression as well.

Ah well. We'll see. I better not count my chickens before they hatch. :p

Visual Stress or Meares-Irlen Syndrome

Brought Stacey to see a pediatric optometrist because despite having generally very good eyesight, she would consistently complain that her eyes hurt after reading for a short while - usually around 10 minutes, and never longer than 15mins at a stretch.

I had read about how some eye problems can translate into a child being diagnosed as dyslexic and heard also from the Educational Psychologist that there was an optometrist here who could look into such things, and so, after hearing her complain again, for the umpteenth time, I decided to sign her up for a full eye examination.

Since the time she was little and was starting to read a little after starting OG lessons, she would complain of being tired after reading or doing work. So this has been a consistent complain for the last 4 years or so. One day, her cousins and my kids were having a read-a-thon, and they were competing to see who could stay reading the longest... and oddly enough, after reading for about 10 mins or so, she stopped, saying that her eyes were too tired to go on. She was also reading one of her favourite books - from the Magic Puppy series, so I knew that it was not the book or the story that was boring and causing her to stop. Her competitive spirit would also usually push her to go on no matter what, so for her to have stopped was a big deal. This was when I knew that the discomfort was real and not just an excuse.

At the optometrist's, she went through a whole battery of tests and was given a completely clean bill of health as far as her eyesight and condition of her eyes were concerned. However, the optometrist was concerned that she was complaining of discomfort after only such a short period of reading... so he decided to try out another test. This one involved the use of coloured overlays on a page - designed to ease the strain of reading. The explanation is a rather technical one, but I immediately knew what he was talking about because I find certain colours more soothing compared to the glaring white of a page on a book. This is especially so when the fonts are messy and complex. I don't like reading off a computer because of the illuminated screen, which is why I prefer the Kindle to the ipad for reading and so on.

So it was no surprise when she readily responded to the overlays and when she finally settled on a colour that she preferred (that caused her eyes to be more comfortable) the optometrist conducted the test, but getting her to read a paragraph that was really a string of about 6-8 easy words that were put together (seemingly) randomly.

With the overlay, she read more quickly, more fluently and covered more words in a minute, compared to without the overlay (same words, different order, different card) where there was obvious hesitance and more faltering with the reading. She also covered fewer words in the one minute. I think she also made more mistakes. So it was quite obvious that the coloured overlay helps. This is called the Meares-Irlen syndrome.

While this syndrome is not widely recognised as yet, more and more research and studies have shown that children are helped by the use of overlays and coloured tinted lenses during reading and work and so on... and it was obvious in the simple test conducted that day.

So we go back again for yet another test - this time to use a machine that will help pinpoint the exact shade that works for her... and we will be making her a pair of glasses that are tinted to help with her reading and work.

She's excited about the prospect of getting glasses, but also somewhat worried because she knows that she will look different from others and that her glasses will be different from that of all the other bespectacled children in her school. I pray that she will have supportive and understanding teachers who will help her cope with this change when she begins school next year. Since we will only be testing on Tuesday the 28th, I am not sure we will get the glasses in time for school when it reopens exactly one week later, especially over the New Year holiday... but we'll see.

Melody - Informal Assessment and Lesson 1

Spent some time going through the informal Assessment with Melody recently.

She's an almost 7yo child, going into the Primary School system next year. I've known MummyB since the time Melody was born, and since Shannon is the same age as Melody, it was always easy to do a running comparison between the two, even though Shannon is a whole 10 months younger than her.

I'd always noticed, once Melody started learning her letters and sounds, that she was rather slow in it. I did make a few suggestions once in a while that perhaps MummyB might want to monitor her a little more closely since she seemed a little slow to pick up the reading... and it was only finally this year when MummyB officially asked me if I could do something for Melody. When I said I would earlier this year, the cost of the sessions put them off because both MommyB and her hubby didn't earn that much and it would be a struggle to pay for twice a week lessons, even at the reduced rate I was offering them. So they waited longer... and because it seemed that Melody was finally making a little bit of improvement, they said that they would wait and see some more.

Finally, a few weeks ago, MummyB asked me again to come and do an informal assessment for her Melody. They were very concerned since she was obviously not ready for Primary One. So I did. Given that Melody was less than a month away from turning 7, I prepared both the lower level Informal Assessment and the "normal" one (meant for school-going children) for the session... but it turned out that I didn't need it.

Melody's issues involved even telling left from right, and even getting the alphabet right. She knew most of her lower case letters, but seemed confused as to which were lower case and which were upper case. She could not produce the alphabet in its entirety from A-Z.

I had a page of CVC words that were quite simple for her to work on. They all contained only short vowel sounds, and nothing "tricky" like "th" or "sh" or anything like that. She could only read a handful, and tried to sound out the rest with little success.

According to her mom, she had been attending some phonics lessons for over a year when she was younger, but they stopped it more than a year ago when it became apparent that she was not improving. She had also seemed to pick up very dodgy vocalisations of the sounds - they all had an additional "er" attached to them... so /t/ ended up as /ter/ instead of the just the unvoiced consonant. And this so totally messes up their ability to blend. This is what makes the work so frustrating too... that I know have to un-teach an already struggling child the poor teaching that she has had, in order to get her to learn it right! Ugh!

Anyway... we also tried some spelling and with the few exceptions that she had had drilled in her already, her attempts were very shaky and often didn't pan out.

So in her first lesson, I first had to tackle her left and right issues, which I did by getting her to pick up an imaginary pencil each time. I also got her to practice different hand actions to associate the movements better with left/right.

Then I also had to deal with handwriting as well as the many reversals that she had... so we are moving quite slowly. We only managed "a", "t" and "b" in that first lesson... and even then, she was a little resistent to the learning of the cards... interestingly, she loved writing... something Stacey always hated.

I'm going to see how much of Lesson 1 she retained before really deciding on what kind of a pace I need to move at. On the one hand, she is far far behind her classmates... on the other hand, her school is the type that begins its school year with the P1 starting from the very basics of phonics and basically assuming that everyone has not been overtaught in Kindergarten. So that will be good for her in the sense that she will have more reinforcement in school... but it depends on how far ahead her classmates are. MummyB did say though that they did some testing in order to stream the children, so that will be helpful for Melody for the time being.

Pathetic at blogging

Sigh... I am so pathetic.

This blog keeps on going into comas... haha.

Well, this is yet another effort to restart it. Mostly because I have somehow gotten myself a new student. I just couldn't bear to say no. Even though I don't really have the time with Zach having so many more therapies now and all 3 of my own kiddos being in Primary School next year, I couldn't say no to my friend B who's daughter Melody (not her real name) is in need for intervention.

Since Melody is a January "baby", I have recommended that mummy B contacts the Ed Psych to get an assessment soon.

So yes, I'm back on track, and hoping that taking the time to prepare Melody's lessons will get me going getting Stacey back on track... and even Zach, if we can fit it in between all his other interventions.

Missing AE...

The hubby received a call today from Stacey's school - asking about the kind of support Stacey was receiving... and hubby referred them to me. Only, they didn't follow up and call me back. So I called the number that was logged on his phone.

Turned out it was not the AE for dyslexia... it was another lady - and she is the Learning Support Coordinator for the LSP. She was apparently collating data on the children, asking who needed support from the school in dyslexia. Stacey was supposed to have seen the AE at her school this year for support and OG lessons during her MT periods... but she only went for one lesson, after which, all was quiet. I only found out today that the AE had left in June or July. Quietly. Without so much as a word of farewell or accountability. Am not happy.

So the school is waiting for a new AE to be assigned, and meanwhile, there is simply no support whatsoever for the girls with dyslexia... and the new AE is not expected to come in until the 2nd half of next year.

Which accounts for my new resolve to reinstate Stacey's OG lessons to their rightful place. Sigh.

This blog keeps dying...

Yes... because my commitment to my own children's OG lessons is so lax. Oh excuses abound... somehow, when it's your own child, and not a "paid" (or even FOC) intervention slot for someone else, it's so easy to push it aside - oh, someone else needs help with schoolwork, which is more urgent... they need to complete their school hw... I am simply feeling lazy... or I simply didn't get down to preparing the next lesson! Argh.

In June, I stepped up the lesson prep for Stacey, since her need for OG is greater than Zach's... and had a 2-wk lesson plan all drawn up... but we never made it past lesson 2. Sad.

Today, I made a new commitment to Stacey to put aside time for OG. On her part, she must eat lunch quickly, and come in for "class" every Monday and Thursday at 2.40pm (she returns home from school at around 2.10pm)... and I, on my part, will keep up with lesson prep as if she were an "outside" student... I need to be accountable... and I need to make her OG lessons a priority. Argh! The same must go for Zach too... even though with him, I'm a little more uncertain because his powerful visual memory makes getting him to blend and learn rules difficult. He doesn't play by the rules. He approaches syllabication and reading in a topsy-turvy manner... sounding the word based on what he thinks is the correct spelling, rather than breaking it up by the sounds he hears. Then again, he could possibly have CAPD, which means that I will have to rethink my strategies with him. Ah well.

I haven't taught Kasser in almost a year. I've had to go to his home a couple of times, to counsel him and on one occasion to scold him, because he threw a tantrum when I asked to speak on the phone and defied his mom's request to come to the phone. Sigh. But there's been a breakthrough. Recently, I spoke to the Form Teacher on the mother's request, and I told the teacher my suspicions. As with most teachers unfamiliar with Dyslexia, she didn't see him as being LD... merely lazy or not trying. In any case, she was reluctant to do anything until the father agreed to the school referring the child to the counsellor... and that was a big hurdle in itself, because the father has "washed his hands off the children" of late, in exasperation and in an attempt to protect the children from his own temper. So, it was with great joy that I received the news that Kasser's mom successfully spoke to his dad and got him to give the approval to refer Kasser to the school counsellor and AE for Dyslexia. On Sunday, I helped Kasser's mom fill in a dyslexia screening form from the school... and I hope that he will get the help he so desperately needs.

Manipulating Syllables...

I'm soooooooooo happy... I've invested in about 3 or 4 sets (I bought them on separate occasions, so I've lost track of how many I have bought) of Bananagrams - basically a word game where you form words using letter tiles in a crossword form (kinda like Scrabble without the board) with other banana-relevant rules/twists. So I bought them because they have more tiles than a Scrabble set has, and there are at least 2 of every letter...

I'm using them to teach syllabication... just so the children have something to touch and move around, rather than doing it all on paper like we have been doing so far. Anything that doesn't involve writing excites the kids... so I feel this was a good investment. I also bought them at a time when Popular was having their 20% storewide discount thing... so they came cheaper than they were when they first appeared on the market. Now they seem to be everywhere!!!

My only complaint is that the letters are all capital letters... although with lower case letters, sometimes the orientation is rather confusing.

Now, I plan to use my paint pen to colour all the vowels red, the consonants blue and mark "y" in a different colour since it sometimes takes on the role of a vowel... now maybe to create some homemade long and short vowel indicators... :)

Updates....

It's been forever... Sep was the last entry, and things have moved on.

Kasser, my one and only non-family student, has his lessons on hold for the time being. This is because he has moved on into the morning session at school, having been promoted to Primary 3 this year. As such, his mother is still waiting for his schedules to be more firmed before embarking on finding two afternoons or evenings for me to give him lessons. The biggest problems in finding a suitable time arise from the fact that I do have to take care and help my 3 children in the afternoon when they come home from school, which is when Kasser is now free, and because I have to be home with my kids, Kasser's mom now has to bring Kasser to me instead of my going to his place (since that would mean my 3 children would be left home alone). During the holidays, when my children were home, Kasser came over to my house for several lessons. My OG classroom is now set up, and I have a place for all my resources and materials, as well as a proper setup for lessons with us facing each other on either side of a table. I can also close the door and shut out the noise of having 3 other children in the house. So I am still waiting. Waiting to see how keen they are in finding a good solution to the obstacles that currently stand in our way.

Stacey's and Zach's lessons also took a back seat towards the end of last year as well because we switched on the "preparing for exams" battlemode. They were swamped with homework and just getting all that work done and trying to ensure that they still had time to take a break and be a kid was tough... never mind making time for OG lessons twice a week. Some days, they worked till bedtime (8pm) and didn't have time to play. Sad.

Stacey and Zach did reasonably well in their exams, and I am proud of the tremendous improvements they made. Despite their difficulties, both managed to score within the Band 2 range... with Stacey making an almost 10% jump!

Kasser also had a 5% improvement in his scores, so I was thankful for that too!

This year, Zach will continue having group lessons on Comprehension with the SNO in his school during Chinese once a week. Stacey is supposed to have her OG lessons with her SNO but nothing has been arranged yet. I really must email her. I find that the support in Zach's school seems slightly better than in Stacey's... but it's probably too early to tell just yet. We are having Stacey do OG in school to see if she responds better in the mornings rather than in the evenings when she's already tired from a long day at school. Also, it is guaranteed to be more consistent, so that will probably help her as well.

Finally, a class with Kasser!

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.

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!!!!

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.

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. :)

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

Apologies...

Been neglecting this blog. Sorry. Updating now...

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...