We had another short week this week (like last week) due to the holiday; however, even with the short week, I saw progress in a couple of students. I was also able to spend some time preparing advertisements for our Second Annual Jazz in the Afternoon event coming at the end of April. Check back in a few weeks for more information, or go to www.listhelps.org and click on the news tab as well. In addition, my work continued on the initiatives I am putting together for grant writing purposes.
This week, while I was working with a third grader on her multiplication tables, the student’s mother mentioned how at home, she was getting very upset and crying while they were working on them together. I have heard this story often since we started LIST. When a parent is working with their child on homework or other school related projects, the students become stressed out, and the parents frustrated. When those same students come to LIST, I never have a problem. I think this is because sometimes it is easier to work with someone you are not related to, and in an environment that is not your home. A good game to play, and a tip for any parents of students reading this blog, whether they are learning multiplication, addition, subtraction or division, is give the student three minutes to answer as many flashcards as they can. This turns the exercise of going over flashcards into something a bit more interesting. You can also make goals for the student, for instance, if you reach 50 flashcards in three minutes, I will reward you with such and such; I plan on doing this next week when the student comes back.
Finally, I’d like to share the progress of a student I’ve blogged about often; a second grade boy who came in with minimal reading skills and has been making great progress. Two things happened this week, the student has nearly mastered the 80 or 90 sight word flashcards we’ve been working on since September. He came in knowing about half of them, and has made great progress over the last several months, but this week, he came very close to knowing all of them (the word “would” continues to trick him up). Also, his reading this week became much more fluent then I have ever heard him read before! This is great news because we have been working on incorporating long vowel words into his reading, and the fact that his reading is becoming more fluent now, when reading becomes much more difficult, shows me the depth to which he has learned the material. Sometimes, student will struggle for months, knowing the sounds and spellings and sounding the words out but with little fluency, and then one day, it’s like a switch was flipped and they start reading fluently. I’ve had this happen several times, and I hope it is the case with this student as well, but even if it is not, his progress is very encouraging!
