picture description
letter sounds
order of ideas/paragraphs
Will had a pretty solid day with fastforword. In the picture description exercise, he's now seen many of the images multiple times, and did a much better job identifying what was happening in the picture. In fact, he got his highest score for the exercise. In letter sounds, he did well with the short vowel sounds, but had some trouble with "ex" , "s", "sh", and "es", but this was the first time he's had those questions, which usually gives him trouble. He continues to have difficulty with the order of ideas and paragraphs. Typically, he'll miss the first sentence or paragraph, but once he has that, he usually puts it together.
Will continued to do a solid job with analogies. He's now gotten more comfortable with the different types, and didn't need much help. He's still having difficulty with the order of ideas.
Today I was a sub for Mr. Kevin. Will played two brain games in his Fast ForWord program. He played Woodworks, where he had to distinguish the different sounds of words and match it with its correct vowel sound. He did very well. A few of the words were more challenging for him to decode and pronounce. Will also played Lana's Lane's where he must read for comprehension purposes. He had to answer questions from the story and choose the correct Venn diagram which demonstrated the meaning of the sentence shown. Great job, Will. I am happy that I had the opportunity to work with him today.
letter sounds
picture description/grammar
reading comprehension
Will is definitely having a little trouble adjusting to the new reading level. Consequently, he's getting frustrated rather easily and reacting strongly when he gets a question wrong. In the letter sounds exercise, he had a lot of trouble with "zh" and "ng", but did much better with the hard "c". He did a much better job in the picture description exercise, but still needs a bit of help understanding the images. His biggest problem is with the reading comprehension, specifically the representative diagram questions. We've gone over it multiple times, but for some reason he's having trouble understanding it. We'll keep working on it.
Will did a solid job with the letter sounds, but this was the third time he's gotten the same letters. I was very pleased with his improvement. He continued to do well with the analogies, especially the synonyms. He has a little trouble with antonyms but is getting better. The reading comprehension continued to be very difficult for him. I think it's just going to take him time to adjust to the detailed questions.
Will had a pretty solid day today. In the letter sound exercise he did much better with the soft "c", but his biggest problem is misreading the words as they come up. Many of his mistakes stem from that. He also hates it when it switches into "speed" mode. He tends to fall apart under the pressure. In reading comprehension, he still has a lot of difficulty with the describing pictures drill. Half the time it's because he misinterprets the picture, and the other half is due to grammar. We'll keep working on it.
Will is still going through an adjustment period for the new reading level. It's all new exercises and he's had some trouble figuring out some of them. The describing pictures exercise requires that he not only find the best description, but it also must be grammatically correct. He missed a few, but sometimes it was the description, and sometimes it was the grammar. I'd say it was about 50/50. However, he did very well with the order of ideas in a paragraph when he read the paragraph and restated the order. But when the gave him a sentence and asked for the next logical sentence, he had a lot of trouble. We'll keep working on it.
Today Patrick began the next program in FF. He started Reading Level 2. Some of these games are similar to his last program. The games that are similar are more challenging. Patrick began a new game, Dog Bone. In this brain game, he listens to a story and must read and choose the correct answers. It requires using listening and decoding skills. Patrick attended a presentation put on by one of his peers.
Will has moved on to the next reading level and had a very good day today. The first exercise was identifying letter sounds in words, in which he did very well. He had a tough timer recognizing a hard "c" in some words, but other than that had no problems. I was very pleased with how well he handled the analogy exercise. We went over the different types (synonyms, anonymous, weaker/stronger, and categories) and he did extremely well. In fact, he only missed 2 or 3 questions. The reading comprehension is much more detailed than the previous level, and it's going to take him a while to adjust to it.
