(45 minutes) literature-“A Furry Friend” Read aloud quiz-100%
(60 minutes) Math- AB/ABB patterns making shapes practice with cutting
(45 minutes) Phonics- beginning reader “We can have a team” with beginning letter sounds M/T
(30 minutes) Language arts- matching capital and lower case letters with sounds
(30 minutes) Handwriting name practice
(30 minutes) Science- my 5 senses flip book
(45 minutes) Stem- Jenga
(45 minutes) Art- guided drawing activity
(45 minutes) literature- Read aloud “The day my mom went to kindergarten” quiz-80%
(60 minutes) Math- cut out shape sorting by size and color
(60 minutes) Phonics- beginning reader “Cam at Bat” with beginning letter sounds, POP letter sounds
(30 minutes) Handwriting name practice
(30 minutes) Science- states of matter (liquid)
(45 minutes) Stem- bridge challenge
(45 minutes) Art- draw and color free choice- Spiderman...
In efforts to improve Will's phonemic awareness, or ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words, I presented him with a hands-on activity involving short-A words. He was tasked with sounding out a series of three-letter words and then cutting and pasting the words under their corresponding pictures. I helped Will cut out the words, but he was afforded strategies to help him sound them out with decreased prompts. I then selected a "B" book from the library and afforded Will supportive guidance and strategies to help decode the words, several of which had 4 or more letters. I specifically selected the "B" book to read as Will, on occasion, will reverses the letters 'b' and 'd.' Will worked hard blending the letters. I was satisfied with Will's efforts today.
Will worked on math seeds for a few minutes before moving on to a phonics activity. He was tasked with matching letters to their sounds and identifying words that began with the sounds. Although making gains in phonemic awareness, He will occasionally become frustrated and says "I don't know" if he struggles with a word, but when offered supportive guidance and prompts, he makes an effort and is very pleased with his successes. We also went up and down the hallway and read the student's names aloud, as they are written on their individual doors. Will seemed to enjoy this activity and remained interested and engaged as we sounded out the students’ names. We finished up our session with a Reading Eggs activity to reinforce and consolidate gains. We focused on phonics and sight words, practicing skills and strategies reviewed in prior sessions. Will remained engaged and motivated by the interactive animations and rewards that are built into the lessons and earned by progressing to different levels.
Will continued to practice sounding out words, with a focus on blending consonants, using Dolch sight words from a 1st grade list. We are working towards learning 47 sight words in this pre-literacy activity that will be beneficial in the acquisition of literacy skills. Will worked on a color-by-number activity to create his favorite Minecraft designs when done. He enjoyed this activity and recognized the characters he drew, applying color where indicated by reading the color key.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
I shared material with Anna that I felt would appeal to both Winter boys with whom we were working so that the two could work alongside one another. I gave her a crossword puzzle, and Will and I worked on blending letters and completing a puzzle by numbers that correlated to colors. I thought we could then switch materials. At about 1:12 PM, without any noticeable precipitating factor or incident, Will started breathing heavily. Anna and I took note of it at the same time and commented. At first, we though he was kidding and we laughed about it as his eyes had a scary, serious look. He took about a dozen deep intakes of breath, which sounded like heavy sighs, after which his eyes became heavily hooded and he was non-reactive. He remained in that disconnected state for a approximately 12-15 minutes. At one point, tears began to roll down his eyes, but he remained non-communicative and unresponsive, despite several teachers, as well as yourself, attempting to connect with him. Will slowly came around and more responsive, around 1:20 PM. I asked his brother Jack working alongside him if he had ever seen him like that; he said he did not. I suggested to Anna to watch him in the next hour (she had him from 1:30 - 2:30), and to note the duration of the episode, if it re-occurred. I subsequently learned he was fine for the duration of the day; however as I mentioned to you, the episode reminded me of a non-epileptic seizure or a dissociative fugue state that I had seen in patients with whom I worked several years ago. I strongly recommended calling the mother and taking him to see his pediatrician or a physician. In my experience, it is unlikely that a Pre-K student would be able to remain non-responsive or shut down for that long a period of time with so many attempts to engage him. I do recall Will had a cold the other day and the incident might be a consequence of that. It is my recommendation that a doctor be advised of the incident. Thank you for listening to and acknowledging my concerns.
Will made a concerted effort to decode Dolch sight words, achieving 77% correct from the list. He will still occasionally start with ending sounds, but this has been far less frequent than when he started. Will occasionally confuses the letters 'b' and 'd,' but when shown the two side by side, he is able to differentiate between them. When tasked with matching blends and word beginnings, Will correctly bubbled in the correct answer 8 out of 11 times, or 72% and was happy to see improvement in his scores. Will also worked on a color by number activity and was able to read 5 out of 7 words independent of prompts. To finish our session, I read Will a short story. He correctly answered 8 out of 10 questions, demonstrating good listening skills, recall, and comprehension.
letters, sequencing, measurement and school celebration
Lesson Outline
Avery enjoyed arranging straight and curved pieces of wood to create the letters of the alphabet. Avery asked to work with the sequencing cards and colored bears to complete various sequences by color and/or size. We worked on the concepts of weight and linear measurement. Using a balance scale and various school objects, Avery determined how many cube units were needed to make the scale balance. Cube units were also used to determine the linear measurement of various items. Avery enjoyed taking part in a school wide Ice Cream Sundae celebration.
Phonics - beginning sounds/ vowel and consonant differentiation/addition less than 5
Lesson Outline
Will is making progress reading 3 letter words with short vowel sounds in the middle. Although at times resistant when introduced to the task, Will meets expectations, given initial guided practice and modeling. Will was also afforded practice differentiating between vowels and consonants. He finished the class practicing simple addition, with sums less than 5. He was tasked with completing a picture using colors assigned to the sum totals.
Will enjoyed eating some pizza that was offered to students as part of today's treat. He clearly enjoyed this very much and requested additional small slices, after which we proceeded to a classroom to work on phonics. He completed several animated online lessons addressing essential reading and phonics skills. The variety of activities within each lesson provided him with the repetition needed for these skills to become part of his phonemic awareness repertoire and long term memory. We continue to emphasize the beginning letter articulation as this is as yet facilitative to performance, but Will achieved about 90% mastery identifying and distinguishing words when tasked. In fact, he did not want to leave when the session ended as he was earning golden eggs as rewards for the progress he made. I assured him we'd continue where we left off in our next session.
- Will was receptive to working on an initial reading comprehension activity. We read a short story together, as I pointed to each of the words, and Will was then tasked with responding to a few multiple choice and open-ended questions. He was first asked to make a guess about the story based upon the picture. Will responded with a correct prediction about how the story would unfold. He answered 60% of the questions correctly. It should be noted, this was a story intended for students in the first grade. We then moved on to working on sight word assessment (first grade as well). Will achieved 63% correct, or 19 out of 30 words correctly. Next, we worked on Reading Eggs on which Will performed well, answering 15 out of 16 questions correctly, or a success rate of 94%. He matched sounds accurately and worked on consonant blends. Although Will was not a huge fan of blending letters and made 2 errors reversing the b and d, he was able to correct his mistake once informed. He was encouraged to note the beginning letters or words and to begin blending with that letter in order to sound out the word. For example, Will would say 'asp' when shown the word 'sap.' Prompting him to note the initial letter facilitated his performance. Will responded well to praise and social reinforcements for his perseverance working on academic tasks.
