Reversed Comprehension and Money

Anyone, who has been following Tamerin's progress, will know that speaking and comprehension are her biggest problems. Following the success she had with formulating and verbally asking questions at her birthday picnic (see previous post) I decided to expand the method further.

When we now read anyone of her books (Jonas Brothers, a High School Musical based book, and a Secret Seven book), I get her to ask questions and I answer. In this way she

• Reads with comprehension
• Gets grammar practice
• Practises speaking

She finds formulating questions very difficult and often does not know where to start, so I still often give her clues e.g. "Jack grabbed Susie by the arm and dragged her home." "Why....?" Most of the time she is then able to complete the question, but often gets the grammar wrong e.g. "Why Jack dragged Susie home?"

She so enjoys this new way of doing comprehension, that I have expanded it to her current theme as well. The latest theme is "Money". We have been talking about employers and employees, salaries, wages, working hours (parttime, overtime etc.) business, profit, stock, cash, interest rate, credit and investments. She types a conversation she could have with her dad about these things. "Today we went to the shops and I compared the prices of products. A 1 kg packet of Viennas costs R30. A packet of 500g of Viennas costs R21. So two packets of 500g cost R42. That is R12 more." Etc. etc.

This theme has been a huge success! Besides the general knowledge and vocabulary, she gets to practice her math skills as well. We look at advertisements of shops. Some have (in very tiny print) the number of installments, the installment amounts and the interest rates below the advertised cash prices. Tammy works out the total amount payable on the calculator. To work out the difference between paying cash or buying on credit, she does the deduction on paper. She was enthralled by her discovery that sometimes you end up paying nearly double for an item. After school she immediatly took the advertisement to show her mother!

We also went to the bank to read the notices and get forms to fill in. (A part of our weekly schedule is to fill in forms - basically to practise neat lettering, but also because it is a very necessary life skill.) Tammy was intrigued with the delayed opening security doors. Afterwards we went to Pick n Pay to revise vocabulary such as "Dairy" and "Bakery" (Food theme), but also to read prices and to compare them. Measuring has also a weekly activity been a weekly activity for months and she had no trouble understanding how to compare 500g, 1 kg, 2.5kg and 5 kg.

She is beginning to remember the methods for calculations e.g. if you know the price of one and you want to know the price of more you must.... MULTIPLY and if you want to know the difference you must TAKE AWAY! We compared the prices of viennas, sugar, flour, pens and wshing powder. In the case of sugar, flour and washing powder, the medium packaging was cheaper the the bulk packaging! "Mom you have to compare prices of products!"

Thanks God for a really fun week! Thank you also that Tammy can finally count money.

Speech Progress 3

We have two weeks before Tammy's prize giving and still a lot of work to do before this gala event. She is now able to say most parts of her speech ( a "show and tell") correctly and without help, but she still speaks hesitantly and softly. So we have two weeks to practice to make sure she can speak confidently, fluently and clearly! Progress has been very good - for both her "speech" and the Nativity puppet show. Through practising the speech, she has internalised "pattern sentences" and new vocabulary with its sometimes tricky pronunciation (she struggles with words like ability, illustrate, rowing). The best part. however, is that her comprehension of both written and oral language has improved drastically.
She still sways a little when she practices her speech, but usually she corrects herself: she really tries to stand still and to hold her pictures still when she speaks. We still have to work on speaking with a smile and enthusiasm though.
Please pray that all will go well. So far, so very good! Thank you, thank you Jesus!

Speech Progress 2

Tammy's speech for her "Prize Giving" is coming along just fine! To make it more interesting and to make it easier for her, we have added a photo for each concept. E.g. a printout of the Excel weather chart for when she speaks about the temperatures, R5 and R2.50 coins for when she talks about fractions. There are pictures of S.A. history and old themes like Hermanus and the Southern Right whatles, but also current history ones like Obama, Mugabe, the inflation in Zimbabwe, the farms etc. To explain how unemployment spirals, she uses carton people and empty containers as businesses.

The important thing here is that her speech has improved much, but also her comprehension. Her homework comprehension this week was about her speech. All her answers showed understanding, even if the written answers were not 100%. For instance, in answer to a history question "What happened to Louis Trichard's people?" She wrote "Sickness malaria mosqito" instead of "They died of malaria". BUT SHE UNDERSTANDS! Halleluja!

Her mother says that Tammy took an old diary with a world map along when they visited a friend. There she showed them the different countries and talked about them. For someone who had not even known that she lived in South Africa at the beginning of the year, this is quite an achievement and I am so so grateful. The Lord is really helping her.

P.S. She was quite upset when Obama won the election - she even phoned me! This is the first time she has phoned me to tell me news. Her mother thinks it is because Mc Cain looks like her grandfather.

Here are some gym photos I took for her speech. We'll print them on their colour printer on Monday.

Tammy now pedals 2.5 km in 10 minutes - a big improvement over her 1.5 km in 10 minutes a month ago!

Abs exercises. She still struggles but does them without a complaint!

The Southern Right Whale Continues

Tamerin is still very keen to learn about the whales. I combined the facts we have learned so far into a "speech" which we are now practising - i.e. she must not only read the piece, but tell it to an audience. To do that, she had to decide which word in each sentence should be emphasised. Was I pleasantly surprised: she pointed to the main subject of each sentence! There is real understanding here. After we had underlined the main words on the first version, she had to make these words bold and colourful on the computer, before we printed the new "speech" version. Besides practising computer skills, this exerise forced her to read with attention.

After practising "telling" the facts, I asked her to form the questions on the piece. Although the questions were not grammatically correct, she had a good idea of what to ask and how to ask. I gave the answers and sometimes asked her to answer her own questions and the oral results were quite good.

Her homework for today is to type the answers to the questions on the computer. I am looking forward to see her efforts, although I know that written work is often still a problem. Nevertheless God, a big thank you for her progress here!

We have started to read for 1 minute periods and to count the words read and deduct the number of words that she did not know. She enjoys this and I think it will really help her with fluency. Thanks for the tip!

The Southern Right Whale

Tamerin's family are going to the Whale Festival at the end of September. The Southern Right Whales come up to the South African coast to have their babies in Spring, before journeying back to Antacrica and are often seen from the coastal towns around Cape Town - especially from Hermanus, where the Whale Festival is held annually.

Tamerin is very interested in the whales, so instead of continuing with her self chosen reader, My Secret Unicorn, I looked up basic facts about the whales and wrote short, simple paragraphs about these interesting creatures. We then looked at videos and pictures on the internet, read and discussed the pieces I wrote and finally she did comprehension on these pieces:
a) Filled in missing words in a copy of the essay e.g. The Southern ...........Whale is found in
the oceans of the southern ...................................... (She knows the words hemisphere!)
To do this she has to read with attention and if she does not the word look it up in the
original paragraph above.
b) Answered questions e.g. "Where do the whales live?" "Do they eat big fish or small
food?"
This method has really helped her to read with understanding and to improve her ability to answer questions. (At the beginning of the year, she did not know the difference between question words like Where, when, why etc. There has been a vast improvement since then, but she still finds it a challenge.) I loved her answer to "Why don't they hunt the Southern Right Whales any more?" They must have babies. If she took the answer from the paragraph, it would have been something about the law prohibiting hunting. Her answer showed real understanding of the whole issue and an ability to think. A new milestone has been reached!

Interestingly the Southern Right Whales were so called by hunters, because they swam slowly and had a lot of blubber. This made them easy to catch and when dead they did not sink. To make sure Tammy understood why they did not sink, we had experiments with margarine and oil in water.

We also measured off how big the whales are: as big as their swimming pool room. One baleen plate is as high as a door (2 m) and as wide as a ruler (30 cm). A whale eats about 400 kg of plankton a day! That is about 7 Tammy's a day (if Tammy was made out of tiny, tiny little fish).

I suppose knowing facts about whales are not really important for a handicapped child, but she was so keen to learn more about them, that it made the whole project very worthwhile. When given a choice she would rather read about and discuss whales, than My Secret Unicorn.

As always, life itself presents the curriculum for Tamerin. I pray that this whale project will enable her to understand more when they watch whales and or exhibitions at the festival and that her interest will be in the whales and not only in what there is to be eaten. I am convinced that her family will be pleasanty surprised by what she knows....!

Unfortunately I was sick for four of the five days this week, so we are a bit behind schedule.

Mastering 10 + and 9+ and the 10 and 9 times tables!

We have not progressed much in terms of sewing, but at least the side seams are sewn - one little unpick here: she generally sewed nice and straight. We pinned darts in the sleeves (yes, the sleeves - not your ususal type sleeve yet!). Hopefully we'll get to sewing them today.

Tamerin's back hurts - it is a pity, because she has finally been showing some progress with the exercises. The exercises are very low key. Today we should go for a walk, but for some inexplicable reason, my feet hurt! What a pair of old crocks! Maybe we'll just dance a little bit. It is a glorious almost spring day, and we really should get outdoors.

In terms of school work: We practiced a lot of 10 + and then 9 +. (10 + for her was not just easy or natural as they are for other children. Adding with 0 is always part of her sum revision sheets!) Anyway she showed good progress here. We also did the 10 times and 9 times tables. I am very proud of her.

Her reading is becoming more fluent and comprehension is also improving. Sometimes she gives great answers and other days she seems not to understand the obvious. We just have to go slowly and patiently up the hill and we will get there. God is so good and faithful!