Reading with comprehension

Today Amy read two more pages out of her reader. We have practised to sight read the new words last week. We practice to sight read through matching the words, i.e. I show her a flash card with e.g. "Important" and ask her to find "Important" among her yellow cards and to place it next to "Important" on her worksheet with the list of words. Then I show and name the cards again and ask her to find the correct word on her list. Only then do I ask her to name (read) the flash cards. Usually she succeeds well with this, but any word she has forgotten goes onto the pile of words to be practices some more. Then I build sentences with the new and familiar old words. Amy loves this. Lastly we read the new text together, before she attempts to read it herself. (It is quite a difficult book, but she has chosen it herself and is therefore quite motivated.)

In verbal conversations I found that she responds poorly to questions e.g. "We went to Spur." "When did you go?" "With my mother." "That is not what I asked. I asked when did you go?" "With the car." I am concerned about this and we have since practiced written sentences where she has to give answers to "when" and "where" questions of the same sentences. (E.g. Mary went to Durban last week.) These exercises have not been too bad, but there are stilll too many mistakes.

I have copied the text of her reader onto the computer. For homework I ask her which words I should delete. In the space of the deleted word, I type in a red . , which she in turn deletes when she types in the (red) missing word as she finds it in the original text. Today I also asked her to compile her own questions on the chosen text. This she found extremely difficult, but we finally managed a few good ones i.e. Who will visit the Cassidy's and "When will Lauren and Twilight visit the Cassidy's". It seems so easy and yet it is surprisingly very difficult for her. (She has progressed so much the past few weeks, that I sometimes forget she was in the special needs class for a reason!) I'm lookin g forward to see her homework tomorrow. She seemed so positive about it and I just hope that the T.V. was not too big a temptation to lure her away from her homework.

I pray for wisdom and insight!

P.S. She has not done quite as well in math's as yesterday, but she remembers most doubles very well. Sometimes she does not listen carefully to what I ask e.g. when I asked what is 26 divided by 2, she answered without hesitation 32! She now manages a crab stand for a few seconds on her own. Last year I would never have thought it possible. School is great!