Spelling that works for us

Tammy's reading is picking up - we have changed our method quite a bit from our previous sight reading method and it seems to work. We read a piece together and Tammy has to follow with her finger and read aloud too. In this way I immediately pick up if she lags behind. Sometimes I stop and let her read a word alone, especially if it is a word she has recently learned. We do not have a graded reader, but read anything that she fancies from the Bible to the newspaper to High School Musical and Zac Efron's annual and webpages. In this way, she becomes familiar with a great variety of words and expressions.

We stop our reading quite often too discuss what we have read. If I don't do this, she doesn't pick up the story line. New words or words she has forgotten are written down on a small white board. I often let her look up the word in the Oxford S.A. school dictionary. We make sentences to explain the meaning of the word e.g Tammy is a resident of M...... Minh is a resident of S..... etc. (If you are new to this blog: Tammy is mentally challenged and English is her 2nd language.)

When the board is more or less full, we go through the list again. I.e. she reads the words and words are explained again if needs be. Long words are broken up in sections to help with pronunciation. I try to use syllables that she knows well and add the prefixes and suffixes. For example today we had recently. I wrote down cent (a word she knows well!) and had her read it. Then I added re and then ly. No problem! We also had attended. I wrote down ten for her to read and then added the rest. Again no problem.

If she struggles with pronunciation, we add similar (known) words to help e.g. when she struggled with malicious, I added delicious; She struggled to remember the pronunciation of au words e.g audition and applause, so I added August with which she is very familiar. This works like a charm. She had some problems with long and short vowels, but here again, I would give her familiar examples like use and us, at and ate. We have never bothered about rules, bus she is "discovering" rules as we go along.

Then she writes the spelling as in a spelling test, but if she hesitates, I quickly show her the word again. There is absolutely no point in ever misspelling a word, merely for the sake of a test. I find that in the twenty words or so, it is very seldom necessary to show her the word again. She spells with ease words like immediately, atmosphere, dedicated etc.

Lastly she reads the piece all by herself. It is heartening to see how she "makes out" the words. Fluency and comprehension improve all the time.

Reading progress

Today Tamerin did a lot of typing again. She read 3 pages out of My Secret Unicorn by Linda Chapman and that before we practised the words for those pages! She got stuck on about 3 words on a page. Up to now we've concentrated on sight reading e.g. we would match, choose and then only read the words, before she tackled the page in her book. Her sight reading has now expanded so much, that we no longer have to "practice" 20 words before trying to read a page. The book is a little bit difficult, but that is the one that she chose at the beginning of the year and her motivation is quite high. She really tries hard. I am excited that soon she will be able to read the other books in the series on her own. At least that is what I am hoping will happen.

Thank you God, for Tamerin's progress in reading!

Mastering sight words with ease.

Before we started homeschooling in January, I asked Amy to give me a book that she would like to read. She chose "My Secret Unicorn: Dreams come true" (I do not have the book in front of me and cannot recall the author now, but anyway it is a series of books about a pony, Twilight, that can be turned into a unicorn.) Amy loves horses and fairy tales, so the story is just right for her. However, the vocabulary is quite difficult to master: to read it, to understand some of the concepts and to pronounce many of the words e.g. managing, exclaimed, electricity. (English is not her homelanguage.)

The first day of school we made a "deal" that we she would be able to read this favourite book all by herself, by the end of the year. I was concerned because the book seemed a bit too difficult and I was afraid she would become discouraged. However, so far, so good. We manage to read about one new page per week. This does not sound like much, but compared to what she was able to read last year, and what she is able to read now, it is considerable. (It helps that she is not ADD - she can concentrate if she wants to!) We are now on page 14.

Our method:
1. New words: I go through the new page and make three identical lists of all the new words + old words she still struggles with. One set of new words is on paper with an open space next to the word. The other two lists I print on different coloured carton and cut them up: one set for her, and one for me.

2. Matching: I then show her a new word e.g. "totally" and ask her to put "totally" next to "totally" on the sheet of paper. While she searches for the word, I make up oral sentences with the word e.g "Everyone totally agrees that you are a very good cook."

3. Choosing: After she has matched all the words (about 26 words per page), I again show her my flash cards one by one and ask her to find the word on the paper. Then I ask her to find the words without me showing her the flash card. I continue with this until she can indicate the words easily. (If she gets stuck, I quickly show her the flash card again.)

4. Naming: I then show her the flash cards one by one and she reads (names) them. The ones she can't read, go on a separate heap and we revise them again. She also writes down the difficult words to improve visualisation and memory.

5. Practicing reading: Then we build sentences with the new words and previous words. In the beginning we used the actual word cards, which were sorted into an alphabetical "dictionary". It was fun, but a bit time consuming to find the right words. Now I just make up sentences with the words on a white board. I use the same words over and over until she remembers them easily. She loves reading these sentences and ask that I write about "Amy". A typical sentence would be: "Amy's mother expects her to be ready at 16:00 for their visit at the nearby farm." (New words: expects, ready, visit, nearby, farm.)

6. Only when she shows that she can read (and understand) the new words in context, do we read the actual book: first together (i.e. I read and she follows with her finger) and then she reads it aloud by herself. By this time, she can usually read it reasonably fluently.

7. Homework: The last exercise is a comprehension: I type the whole passage, but leave out words for her to fill in from the text in the book. The words to be filled in are mostly high frequency words like "ago", "again" etc. rather than difficult words. Then I ask a few questions to determine comprehension:"Why did the family move the farm?" "When did they move to the farm?" Amy finds these questions still very hard, but we are getting there. I think it is very important that all reading should be linked to comprehension as well.

I know this method works - not only for Amy. I also did it with small groups in my class last year and then words were vere basic. First set of words: fat, cat, mat, hat, man, sat. With these words we made sentences like" fat cat sat on man" "fat man sat on hat" (Who sat on the man? Where did the man sit etc.)

Isn't teaching just the greatest job? Especially if there are no playground duty and staff meetings!

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!