I love working with Will. He has great motor skills for only being 4 and can follow directions really well. He's a little shy with other students and teachers but he is sweet and gets all his work done.
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.
Goals: Use the given activity to start learning colors and simple addition. Focus on controlling the paintbrush and choosing the right color.
Assignment
Paint by number
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Love working with Will, he is so sweet and always works hard. We practiced some basic addition and he did great. Working on controlling whatever he's using to draw and paint.
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.
