I am so impressed with Patrick differentiating his bs and ds so quickly. He seemed to really struggle with the letters, but successfully discriminated between the letters today with little prompting. "b's have bellies and d's don't" has seemed to help him a lot. We reviewed the -ab sound and Patrick used letter tiles to build -ab words. I gave him several consonants and he had to determine the letters that made a real word versus the ones that don't. For example, he realized that adding h to -ab does not make a word, but adding c to -ab does. Then we used word ladders to write a list of -ab words. Lastly, patrick wrote a simple sentence using 2 of the -ab words we discussed today. Today Patrick took his first speed test. Our goal was to complete 10 problems correctly in 30 seconds. Patrick completed 10 problems in 35 seconds correctly, which was awesome for the first day! Next, Patrick explained to me with models how the commutative property works. He understands that the order of the numbers in addition problem does not change the answer:) Lastly, I introduced steps for solving word problems. (1 Find the important numbers 2)Find the important words 3) Write a number sentence 4) Solve the problem with a math strategy (Pictures or tally marks). Patrick was very successful!