See how much we have grown!

 R has shown great improvement in trying to thin about the placement of the sound the word makes. If he makes the word sound incorrectly. He stops and thinks about it, then tries again.  R is more open to hearing his classmates correct him on his speech. Then he will try the word again.  R also has shown great improvement in raising his hand to participate in classroom conversations. He has shown more confidence in the way he speaks, that he will actually participate in class and share his opinions. His class read the book Cactus Hotel. R shared his favorite part of the book, the ending. He continued to explain that it was his favorite because in his backyard there is also a cactus that is dead and on the ground. While building the robot, R counted the bottles of paint and said “dounted”. Another child corrected him, and said “counted” R tried to say “counted” again.

 R is able to identify all 26 upper case letters in the alphabet. This is an improvement from the beginning of the year where he was able to identify only 20.  R can now identify 24 out of 26 lower case letters in the alphabet. This is an improvement from the beginning of the year where he was able to identify only 14. Instead of just pointing to our site words on cards, R now writes site words in sentences. “I em safl for my faumle and my dog”

Over the course of the school year, I have witnessed R sit quietly with a book, and turn the pages. He will now openly read along side with me, and with confidence.

R learned two new shapes by December 4 th Square Cone (3D)

Ray began the year by sounding out the letters in the alphabet through the use of Zoo Phonics in both his main classroom, and his SEI classroom. In the middle of the semester he progressed in his SEI classroom to working with handouts where he filled in missing letters within words, and reading simplistic books. These books had few words that were easy to sound out on each page. They were phonetically easy to sound out, contained many easy site words, and had only a few on each page. Ray has grown in his reading skill and is now able to read this book at 90% accuracy with little to no assistance. He can recognize and use different strategies while reading, from seeing different rhyming words, to understanding repeating phrases within the text.

In the beginning of the year, Ray was completely focused on how many frowny faces he received from his teacher. Now that we have reached the end of the first part of the school year in December. Looking into his journal, Ray has not received a frowny face in over a month and a half. This is a great improvement on his part.

Ray is able to write in complete sentences which is a great improvement from what was observed in his SEI classroom. In a notebook that was sent home over fall break, Ray looked through all his work and wrote out his own personal goal;”I will do my best. I will prectis sit words and numbrs. Thank you Ms A..” I can see great improvement in complete sentences using punctuation marks and spelling phonetically.

RAY REACHED HIS GOAL OF READING ALL 220 SITE WORDS. HE NOW IS MOVING ON TO READING THEM WHILE BEING TIMED TO TRY TO BEAT HIS TIME FROM THE WEEK BEFORE ON NOVEMBER 18 TH HE WAS ABLE TO READ ALL 220 SITE WORDS IN 3:12.

 I had asked R what he had learned so far in school. He said nothing, and after some conversation about all the amazing things he had learned, I asked what he wished he could have learned. He said he wanted to learn how to make a robot.  Ray has a great amount of knowledge in both 2D and 3D shapes, and R has knowledge in 2D shapes. This opened up a new way for R to see 3D shapes, and handle them one on one while doing something that he wanted.

R’s mother has expressed concerns about his social interactions, and wanted him to interact more with others in the school setting. This provided him the opportunity to do so, but in a non threatening environment where R felt safe. Ray’s mother informed us of his love for building things. He used Legos at home to build transformers, and she would be interested in seeing the robot.