On a completely non-tutoring note, I changed my blog colors to make them more Spring like. I love Spring, it is my second favorite season. Fall is my first, but of course there are some wonderful things about Spring that you can not get in any other season. At least not in the North East.
As you can see from the picture of me above, I have always loved Spring! When Spring is here, I feel so peppy and ready to work.
I am hoping my student starts feeling that way also. Lately she has really lacked motivation and she seems to be in a funk.
Back to business: Last week I ended up bringing my youngest daughter to our tutoring session. I had to pick her up early from the sitter because the sitter had an emergency. I didn't want to cancel my session with D, because we had missed the week before. So I said to myself, I am going to bring Ally with me. She is three and LOVES books, so I immediately decided this week, D would read to Ally during our session.
Of course, D was late, again. But I didn't say anything negative to her about it. I am always positive with her, which is not easy because she is a generally pessimistic person.
When she walked in she saw Ally right away and smiled big. She seems to really like children, and Ally is cute and sweet and easy to like so there was an instant attraction.
I told D she would be reading to Ally and she got nervous. I reassured her that Ally is only three and has no expectations about how well or not well she can read, so she relaxed.
I actually took a video of her reading to Ally. I will post it at the end. It is hard to hear her, but hopefully you can understand.
The book Ally picked was a rhyming book about a rabbit family. In the beginning she stumbled over many of the longer words, and I had to correct many of the words for her, but by the end of the book D was reading more fluently. It just confirms for me that with more practice she will be able to read fairly well.
The hard part is getting her to practice at home when she is not being pushed. She really has a hard time pushing herself.
I know some libraries use dogs to help young struggling readers. They have dog volunteers come in and the children just sit and read to them. The theory being that the children can relax and just read, there is no pressure because dogs do not judge. Well neither do three year olds. Ally was an easy audience for D because there was no pressure, no judgement, she could just read.
I wish I could bring Ally to more of our sessions. It would be very difficult logistically. I know D has some nephews that live with her and her family. I am thinking about donating some of my kids' books to her and having her, as an assignment, read to them each week. I am going to bring it up to her this week, I will let you know how that goes.
The picture above is of my two oldest girls. Maddie the 10 year old is a great reader and will often read to her sisters, if they can convince her. Children make great literacy partners!
Now here is the video, I edited it to make it shorter. Enjoy!
2 comments:
does your organization do any screening to determine if the clients have learning disabilities such as dyslexia? do you teach them how to sound out the words?
Ginger, we actually do not do screening at the intake. In some of my earlier posts you will see that I do believe my student has dyslexia. It is a problem of funding that we are not able to do that. I have only been working with D for a few months now and many times she comes late or not at all. It is difficult to get a full lesson I with her. So to answer your question I have not been able to work on sounding words out with her. I really think for right now, I have been focusing on building her sight word base because I feel that will make it easier for her to get to a place where she can focus on sounding the words out. Again it is difficult to get her to practice the sight words on any consistent level. It is something I worry and think about often, how to get her to self motivate. I am open to any suggestions on that and on tutoring techniques!
Post a Comment