Tamerin's birthday and reading

Tamerin's 14th birthday was a great occasion. We went to see the South African stage version of High School Musical and she and friends were enthralled. Such a happy day. She blogged about it here. (To any South Africans who might be reading this post, the show is well worthwhile.)

I gave her a Zac Efron (the main actor in the HSM movie) book and below are a few short video clips of how we go about reading it. As we did last year, we still:

1. Match words (look at the word and hear it and match it to the correct word on the base sheet).

2. Choose and show words (hearing the word and finding it, without an example.)

3. Sight read the words individually (flash cards).

4. Write the words.

5. Read sentences.

The words are chosen from text she wants to or needs to read: i.e. they are most of the new words in a particular piece and include words I know she has struggled with before.

What I find very satisfying is that Tammy is now better able to split up a word in syllables and read it syllable by syllable instead of just guessing the word. When we come to a difficult word, I write down the "bits"and we practice saying it, bit by bit. Not only does it help much with pronunciation, but I find that in the end she can actually spell words like inevitably, mischievous, initial, relationship. (Bearing in mind that she is supposed to be mentally handicapped, this is quite an achievement.)

Pronunciation is improving - very slowly, but surely. The HSM dialogue she and her brother did on her birthday party went quite well, but unfortunately the video clip is not too clear - they were pretty much silhouetted against the light. I will keep the clips though, as they will help me to evaluate progress in speech later this year. It is already light years better than 20 months ago, when I first met her.

"Gabriella" arriving at her new school.

Matching words

Choosing words

Flash cards

Writing out new words

Reading Zac Efron's Annual.

Life Skills and motivation to learn academic work

The advantage of home schooling is that there is no set time table or curriculum, so we can adapt learning to Amy's specific needs of the day. The day after she learned how to send an email, she said she ate chips (crisps) for breakfast. This lead to a discussion of the food groups. To corroborate my hastily compiled chart, I got Amy to use a search engine to find an article on food groups. Amy was quite keen to work on the internet again. Her reading ability is not good enough yet, to really search through the various options, but just to get the search engine to search was in itself is a good beginning! (She printed the chosen article and we'll get back to it, when the need arises to talk about food groups again.)

The day after we practised international time i.e. that 16:00 is 4:00 pm., her mom emailed that she would be seeing her at 16:00. I don't think Mom even thought for a minute that for a child who has only been reading time for about 6 months, 16:00 does not automatically translate into 4 o'clock. Fortunately, we had been practicing how to convert international time to "ordinary" time and vice versa, so Amy could work out when he Mom would be coming home!

The point I am trying to make is that by concentrating on the specific math's and reading needed for life skills like reading the calendar, the weather forecast, the clock, recipe measurements etc., the child is motivated to master them. Once the child turns on his/ her own motors there is no saying how far one could go. Finding that what you learn and practice in the classroom, is actually used in the shops, in the kitchen, in the car etc. makes you feel you belong in the real world.

Homeschooling is great! Thank you God for giving us this opportunity!

Electronic communication is really thrilling!

Last week I helped Amy to open an email address - she had to do everything herself, from plugging in the modem to opening "compose" to type her very first email. Her mom was thrilled. For a child who struggles to read, it was amazing how fast she could she find terms like "inbox", "send", "subject" etc. on the screen! She sent her first email to her Mom. Subject "Surprise!". Mother, me and Amy herself were all surprised by how well she could do it. Her homework of course was to send an email to me! Amy also enjoys SMS's, but Emails are far more satisfactory. At least they do not disappear as eaily from the screen as have happened in the past with painstakingly typed SMS's. (Mom and Dad, she typed a grand SMS to you, thanking you for her birthday party, but something went wrong when she tried to send it - what a dissapointment.) It took us much longer than the usual reading of math's lesson time, to get the email up and running, but the amount of reading and typing she did was the same (or more) than she would have done in a "normal" reading lesson. The big difference here was, that she was really motivated to master this. If a child is motivated, there is no saying what he/ she could achieve. Last year Amy was an emotional, stuttering "mentally handicapped" child. (See background, posted February 2008). This year she is just a bundle of untapped potential that is waiting to be discovered. God has a very special task for her and it is for us to discover what it is and how to get her there!