Is this really reading ?

One child I work with is going into 3rd grade.  She has already failed once and would have probably failed this year had she not already failed a grade.  I have worked for a year to get her excited about even opening a book.
Today at the library she looked through many books and wrote them down as having read them.  She has already read the 20 required to finish the summer reading program.  I read them with her, to her or had her read them to me. When she was telling me  "Look how many I have read." Someone else said, "Yes, and I saw how you were reading them, too."  Where does reading start?  It is certainly not by leaving the book on the shelf.  I went over some of the books she had read. Some of the books she did not understand and possibly had not read or not understood. Instead of telling her I was not sure she had read them, I told her I wanted to see if she understood what she had read. I was pleased at how much she had understood.  Turning the pages and looking at the pictures and words you can read is certainly to be praised in my opinion.

I do not feel well today

Today, the 15 year old I tutor was not feeling well.  This is often the case when he comes.  He uses this as an excuse to cut tutoring short.  His grandmother and I are working on getting him to stay the entire hour.  Today he really did not want to come.  I told him that it was not my fault if he stayed up too late. I could tell he did not have the energy for me to push him.
I started out giving him a drink of water to sip on while I made him some tea.  He takes medicine that makes him feel ill.  I also offered him some chips which seemed to help.
We started out reading the book I am reading aloud to him.  He insisted he felt too ill to stand on the balance board. Then I had him play word go fish to encourage him.  He did well at that and it gives him the confidence to continue learning.  It is so much fun to see him forget he is not supposed to know how to read the word.  He has to build his confidence as well as his ability to read.  I also had him do some memory work.
I told him tomorrow hopefully he will feel better and he hopes so too.

Slow down, I am too tired to learn your way

 Yesterday, I worked with an 8 year old and was excited because I knew what I wanted to do.  Enter the 8 year old. This child was tired and needed permission to regroup.  He came in and asked to play a game. He chose Rummy-O. This teaches the same thing my set- making game does.  It also takes longer.  Instead of drawing one tile each play we drew two each time. Children like to draw tiles.  The object is supposed to be to Win by getting rid of all your tiles first. The child needed to learn how to play and learn grouping of numbers.  You are also not supposed to let the other player see what tiles you have.  We set the tiles up and then helped each other.  Before the game was over he was showing me what I had to play a couple of times.  What a confidence builder for him to find my move before I did.
Then we worked on the balance board and he did well.  I began tutoring by reading every other sentence while the student reads the opposite ones.  This prevents the negative, "You forgot to stop for the period."
It also helps understanding by stopping at each complete thought. I am working for this child to read every other paragraph. He likes the every other sentence better. The reading selections are also longer. He is resisting the longer as it looks harder so we stopped in the middle of the selection.
I hope today goes as well.

Slow down and listen

     Thursday's tutoring was interesting.  This means I am not sure I can explain what happened.  First, the kids dog managed to get sprayed by a skunk.  How can this possibly affect tutoring? First, there is a smell that comes with the dog and the kid felt sorry for the dog and let him come with him.  This means we cannot read outside with the dog there. Next, the dog rubs on the boy's pants so a slight smell comes in the house with the boy. This smell causes the kids allergies to act up so there is coughing and sneezing.  
     Now add a tutor who is excited about how well the boy did on Wednesday at tutoring and does not notice the warning signs that she needs to slow down. The boy still did well on the more difficult balance board. At this point the tutor should have had the boy work in the rocket phonics book.  Instead, I tried the second lesson in Hooked on Phonics and the boy struggled. As a result, we did not read or listen to the tape in the house..  He nor I felt as good when he went home as the day before. Thankfully, I stopped before we undid the trust he has in me.
     Today on Friday, I had to take a step back and allow the boy to step back also.  The balance board went well and I had him do the one long division problem.. I had him decide which number we should chose to divide with so he could regain the control he needs to learn. He chose 9.  Then I drew the division symbol and let him chose the numbers to divide the 9 into.  I realize I will need to use colored pencils to write the numbers to teach him math. Then we went back to the rocket phonics book and he did well.  He likes the computer so he was willing to try the hooked on phonics again. I had him go back and do lesson one again. I controlled the computer so he could get more out of it and also have to tell me what he was doing verbally. This way he used more of the senses to learn with.  Monday is a holiday, so we will see on Tuesday how things go.

Keeping up with success in student learning

 Yesterday I moved the difficulty level for the balance board for the 15 year old. We start at level 50 which is the easiest level and parallel to the board. This student had struggled at first to stay on the board and even fallen off several times.  He was succeeding at level 45. I made a decision to see if he could succeed at level 25. Level 25 puts the rockers under the board at halfway between parallel and perpendicular to the board.
He succeeded better than I dreamed he would.  After working on this level for 10 minutes, I offered to add an activity. He told me his feet hurt.  I immediately praised him and stopped working on the board.  He did not offer an excuse or tell me felt bad. This is such an exciting improvement both with the balance on the board and in his confidence to say my feet hurt when he had used all the energy he had for working on the board.
This gave me the confidence to try using the Hooked on Phonics program I have. He could not have used this program when we started. He liked the Hooked on Phonics and did well with it.
When it was time to listen to the book we are working on reading, I teased him and said I was not sure where it was.  He smiled and said, "I guess I will just have to go home then."
I laughed and said, "Oh, no you won't."
I found the book quickly and we listened to almost an entire chapter.

Grades

The son, who was struggling that I wrote about earlier, finished his semester and received his grades.  He made 1 A, 2 B's and 1 C. I would have been pleased with 4 C's.  Keep on going son and mom will try to keep up.

Confidence building for a learning challenged child

      A young man I almost did not have the confidence to tutor appears to be going to learn to read.  It is slow and sometimes I push too hard. Sometimes he can stay 20 minutes, sometimes 40 minutes and often an hour.  He is doing well enough that it is time to show him what he can do and build his confidence.  We are listening to a Louis L'Amour book.  We have already listened to a short story by him and a Hank the Cow Dog book.  This young man is interested in hunting and fishing, so I look for books that he will like and understand.  

     We are doing  To The Far Blue Mountains. I have this book on Cassette tapes and checked out the book from the library.  I let him just listen to the first chapter to see if he has interest in the book. For chapter two, I copied the first page of almost four paragraphs and enlarged the print from 100 percent to 200 percent.  Then I underline the words he can read in his favorite color.  Color is important to this.  Out of about 120 words in the first two paragraphs, he could read 83 of the words.  When he appears  to hesitate I give him the vowel sound from the rocket phonics we are using. Then we listened to the chapter.