Jack

Tuesdays are Jack's days.  Jack is in Kindergarten and I've been tutoring him for about a year now.  He has made so much progress it's mind boggling.  When I first met him, we were going over shapes and letter recognition, something other children his age had already mastered a year before.  Now, approaching the end of the school year and getting ready for first grade, Jack can sing the alphabet without forgetting any letters (yay!), he can name the sounds of most of the letters automatically (he still has to think about some, and often gets 'b' and 'd' confused...but what 5 year old boy doesn't?), and can recognize and sound out over 15 words (BIG YAY!).  Jack is confusing to his teachers, since he progresses more slowly than many of his peers, but his evaluations have indicated that he is in the average range cognitvely, and that he does not appear to have a learning disability.  My training as a school psychologist kicks in at this point and I can foresee Jack falling farther and farther behind his peers as he progresses in school and everyone starts to read fluently except for him, and by second or third grade he will probably have much lower academic scores than the other students in his class, which will then prompt another evaluation (already they are doing a second evaluation at the end of this year), and he will most likely be diagnosed with a learning disability in order to receive services he should be receiving now (in order to prevent his falling behind).  All of this will most likely happen UNLESS he can be taught to overcome, and/or accommodate for, some of his weaknesses now...which is where I come in as his reading tutor.

For the past few weeks I've been letting Jack play some games on pbskids.org for the first few minutes of his hour.  I started doing this because he often would arrive at my house crying, and I would have to pick him up and carry him into the living room (kicking and screaming) while his mom snuck out the door.  He likes the computer games, finds them more fun than the work I have for him (I'm still working on that...) and it calms him down.  He now also appears to like coming to see me, and often has a smile for me when he arrives (how refreshing!). 

This week, however, I took out the computer time since I had a new task to try with him.  He seemed a little disappointed, so I don't think I'll completely take computer time away for good just yet, but he settled down on the rug and was ready to get to work.  I should mention that Jack has difficulty writing his letters still (Occupational Therapy was one of the things he was being evaluated for last year, but the school district decided he did not need that service).  The new task I had for him consisted of using these nicely made thick, but flat, plastic... hmmm...cards?  I'm actually not sure what to call them.  But they have lower case sandpaper letters on them.  The Director (and teacher), Lindsi, at the Montessori preschool where I am an aide (for a wonderful little girl who is blind) suggested I try these with Jack.  By tracing his fingers along the oversize tactile letters, we not only worked on beginning sounds (I had pictures of animals accompany the letters), but he was practicing moving his fingers and hand in the shape of the letter (fine motor skills!).  The first letter we did, 'c,' he tried to twist his wrist so that as his fingers followed the curve they went from pointing up to pointing down.  Not only did this look uncomfortable for him, it was not what I wanted him to do.  I had to show him how to keep his wrist straight and fingers pointing in one direction as he followed the letter.  He became better at it as we did more letters.  In all, the letters we worked on were: c, s, t, f, d, and b.  With each letter he had to tell me the name of the letter, what sound it made, and then point out whatever pictures started with that sound (cat, dog, tiger, fish, etc.).  He confused the 'd' and 'b' regularly throughout this exercise, and even had some trouble finding the pictures beginning with the sound we were working on at the moment (he also did not recognize the tiger and called it a lion), but I think it was a very useful and helpful task for him.  He also insisted on rhyming some of the words we used (like dog and frog) since he was so excited for winning a rhyming game today in school (he beat all the kids in his class!).  It was really great to hear him ask to rhyme!


After this we moved onto doing flashcards with the sightwords: the, to, go, like, you, and, I, is, am, me, and it.  This time last month he was able to do maybe half of these words, and had to really think and struggle with them in order to get them.  Today he was able to whip right through, struggling only with 'and,' 'it,' and 'me.'  He did so well that at the end of the session I even added a new word, 'man,' and we sounded it out together and mixed it in with the other words.  He read through all of them with no problems!
After sight words, we read the first several pages of Go, Dog. Go! by P.D. Eastman, and I had Jack read out loud some of his sightwords, and we also sounded out other words like 'big,' and 'dog.' He did really well with this task and actually did not want to end it, but I wanted to move on before we ran out of time.  So we marked the page where we left off, and he made sure we would pick right back up next week. :)



The last task I had for him was Lessons 8 and 9 out of the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons book, by Siegfried Engelmann, Phyllis Haddox, and Elaine Bruner.  I started doing these lessons several weeks ago after watching Lindsi (from the preschool) use the book with some of her students.  I'm really liking the simplicity of the lessons, and how they are very repetitive and focused on the sounds of letters and how those sounds mesh together in words.  These lessons, which only take a few minutes each, are perfect for Jack since it really targets the skills in which he needs the most help.

After finishing with another round of sightwords (and adding 'man') I read a couple of chapters of Captain Underpants (he loves these books) before his mom came to pick him up.  Overall, he did really well today, and I was so happy to give his mother a good report.  I feel bad for her sometimes because she often comes to my house to drop him off with news of bad reports from school.  I think one of his greatest improvements over the past year has been his behavior.  As long as he is happy, he is able to interact with me and successfully complete the tasks I have for him.  On bad-mood days, if he shuts down it's all over before it even began.  As he becomes more and more successful on the tasks he is being given, I'm seeing his level of confidence (and his mood) stay up.