Sean and Brian

These little guys are brothers, ages 8 and 6.  Sean is in second grade and Brian is in Kindergarten.  I started tutoring Sean about two years ago, because he was having difficulty with fluency and reading comprehension.  He was held back in first grade.  Brian was also kept back and is repeating Kindergarten.  Brian seemed to be progressing really well when I started tutoring him at the beginning of this school year, and I really thought he didn't need me.  However, the last two months he seems to have plateaued, and is having the same difficulties his brother had when he was younger (fluency and comprehension).

I usually start with Brian, while Sean finishes his homework.  Brian's homework consists of him reading passages out of his Orton-Gillingham workbook (his district uses the Orton-Gillingham method), so we work on those, focusing on the sounds of that day.  Today we worked on blending 'bl,' (like the word 'black'), using 'y' as a long 'i' (like in 'shy' and 'my'), and attaching past tense 'ed' to words (like in 'packed' and 'patched').  He has a lot of difficulty with fluency (as I said before), and so we were working on reading some of the phrases that had words he has already mastered (like "she is in") in a more fluent and natural tone.  We also went through some of his words of the week (into, book, can't, my) and I included some of his past words (top, she), as well as the words he'll need for next week (think, great, say, cut).  I also included a word ('each') that was in some of the passages, and with which he was having a lot of difficulty ("ea- says eeeee").  He did pretty well with all of the words; he does such a great job sounding out, and his memory is great when it comes to not-so-obvious sounds, like pairing 'ch' for a new sound.  The last thing we worked on was Lesson 4 of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  I think these lessons are so helpful for Brian since it really emphasizes fluidly sounding out words, as opposed to the choppy way he has become so accustomed to.  (I know the Orton-Gillingham method teaches using your fingers for each sound in a word, as though you are counting the sounds, and I think that's really helpful for a child to say each sound in a word but Brian still pronounces words he already knows by saying each sound with a pause in between before saying the full word fluently).

While I was still working with Brian, Sean finished his homework, and I encouraged him to check it.  He often rushes through it so fast he misses some important directions and needs to make a number of corrections.  Usually he claims he has not made any mistakes, and has a lot of difficulty finding them when prompted.  But today when I gave him back his paper, he found his first mistake almost immediately.  (Woohoo!  Progress!)  I still had to work with him on some other mistakes, and he needed help reading through some of the questions and even some of the answer choices (how can a child complete his math work when he can't read the words 'trapezoid' and 'congruent?').  I also had brought him The Adventures of Captain Underpants, Book 1, by Dav Pilkey, which I picked up at the used bookstore (Used Books & More) for $1.00!  Sean had been talking about his friends reading the books and liking them, but he could never seem to find it at his school library.  While I was still working with Brian, Sean read through the first 5 chapters (they aren't very long, but still...he's reading a book!).  After we had gone over his homework, I had Sean do Lesson 9 of the 100 Easy Lessons book.  He is beyond many of these beginning lessons, and goes through them quickly, but since he has had such a history of having difficulty with fluency, I think these lessons reteach the basics and help fill in some of the missing pieces of the foundation that was built when he first started learning how to read.  Regardless if this is true or not, he thinks the 'say it fast' games are pretty fun, and it gives him a huge boost of confidence to be good at something that has to do with reading.