Jack and I began our session with introducing ourselves to each other. Jack seems like a very intellectual student. He is very talkative. I enjoyed interacting with him. We then watched a 'BrainPOP' video, "Tornadoes". Jack then stated that if he ever encountered a tornado, he would stay in a closet or bathroom (a place with no windows). We then created a tornado in a jar with ingredients such as a jar, dish soap, food coloring, and vinegar. Jack really enjoyed this activity. He was able to take his jar home to show his siblings and parents and he was excited to do so. I also wrote the ingredients on a sheet of paper for him to keep and Jack wrote a sentence about where he would go in his home if there was a tornado.

I administered the reading words and sentences section of the test.

Jack worked hard on the Stanford Achievement Test. He was focused and engaged.

Jack worked on a mask. We used the mask for acting. We watched a puppet show.

Jack was absent today.

Goals: create a summer cactus in a pot using paint, our hands, paper and scissors...
Create a cactus made of your handprint, add colorful flowers then cut out a shape of a pot and glue it to the image.

I assessed Jack's phonological awareness (the ability to hear and manipulate sounds within a word) using a tool called PAST. Phonological awareness is highly predictive of reading success. Jack shows weakness at the level of substituting one phoneme of a beginning blend ("say grew, now say grew but instead of /g/ say /t/"). Next, I conducted a review of the sound deck with visual, auditory, and blending drills. Graphemes for the visual drill included h, l, w, s, f, I, k, z, d, t, m, f, x, p, n, a, e, u, o. For the auditory drill, Jack wrote the letters for the following sounds: /a/, /s/, /k/, /o/, /l/. I notice that Jack struggles to form some lowercase letters and substitutes them with uppercase letters. Jack decoded a list of consonant-vowel-consonant words. I dictated the following words for him to spell: fun, hum, pot. Finally, Jack sequenced the alphabet using manipulative letters. He identified the vowels and the consonants and discussed the vowels in his and his brothers' names.

Jack did well reading a passage entitled, 'Your Five Senses' and writing answers to questions about the text. He was tasked with writing the name of the letter of the beginning sound of given words. Jack started to create a book about his family. He will add to the book each session. Jack enjoyed a game of sight word bingo. Additionally, he did well on graphing activities.

I assessed Jack using the CORE Phonics survey; the results will guide my instruction. Jack correctly identified all 26 uppercase letters; he identified 25/26 lowercase letters (he confuses b and d). He correctly identified 21/21 consonant sounds, including the hard and soft sounds of c and g. For vowel sounds, he correctly identified 5/5 of the long vowel sounds. He correctly identified 3/5 short vowel sounds (he misarticulated the short sound for a, saying /o/, and for u, he said /yu/. Next, he read short vowel words (consonant-vowel-consonant), reading 10/15 correctly. He struggled with short e and short I words (reading lat for let, fut for fit, sit for set, and pim for pem). When asked to read consonant blend words with short vowels, Jack read 4/15 correctly. He read trap as top, quit as quot, spell as spall, sank as snak, lump as lip, held as hiled, dilt as built, qued as quilt, and dran as drain.) I concluded the assessment, and we played sight word Jenga for the remaining time. Given the results of this limited assessment, it is my opinion that Jack would benefit from regular Orton-Gillingham instruction.

Today we worked on our chess skills. We turned the board around to see the opponent's approach and viewpoint. After several moves I revealed my strategies and gave out tips on how to counter my offensive. We ended playing a blitz match online where each player only has three minutes.