Major Pat on the Back
and those moments on how did he get through the last two years not knowing how to do these things.
We are rolling into our 7th week and we are 2 weeks away from our first Quarter being completed. We have had some amazing accomplishments but still have some major fails that need adjusting.
The math program is running smoothly and Lawrence is doing very well with it. It is a common core curriculum and the program I went with does make one think outside the box but it lacks review, repetition and memorization of math facts which I think is what is really lacking in the common core curriculum as a whole. So I have supplemented the program with math review and we are currently working on developing our multiplication lapbooks to strengthen math facts. He has done very well with the 100 addition facts but his time to complete is from 18 minutes to 25 minutes for the 5 minute drills. We do need to work on time but I am more concerned with the idea that he know the facts rather than the time it takes to complete them.
In the past he has done horribly on spelling words but I could never understand how they presented them in the school setting. They seemed to be random not linked to reading or grammar they were working on. Lawrence never liked the activities in school linked to the spelling word reviews. My girls had worked with McGraw Hill where the reading, grammar and spelling and vocab all worked together, I decided to give that a try. I removed sorts and spelling sentences, the sentences especially since he was going to see them through out our readings for the week. He works through the workbook over 4 days and I added flashcards for ABC order and 2 times each on the paper through Handwriting without tears. This paper has been a huge help in ending some of the writing frustrations associated with the small lined papers. After 5 weeks we have success. He learns spelling patterns and sees them in sentences. He is very proud of his accomplishments and has noticed he is accomplishing things he had not accomplished or mastered in the past.
He is enjoying the non ending mold experiement. He is loving the daily geography lessons because it is all about maps and pirates use maps. He enjoys getting up and doing a 15 minute non-school related activity between lessons and he loves it even more when the break turns out to be a little longer because Mom has something else she needs to complete. There are days I can not figure out why he gets so upset over doing the work and then there are days where he does everything on his own without prompting him to do it. Our biggest accomplishment is just starting and finishing a lesson, even if it means the lesson has been put off till tomorrow. We do not move forward until I know he has a basic understanding of what we are working on. Which brings us to my next paragraph.
We have some major obstacles that we will classify as our failures right now. ELA is our worst subject . He hates writing or sequencing thoughts to put into a sentence. Sequencing is one of his major problems with his apraxia. He will not write past a sentence, he can not add to prompts or come up with ideas to write about. He doesn't understand sentence structures when it comes to actually writing them and he is so hit or miss with grammar: nouns, pronouns and verbs. He is enjoying the trips to the library, he is reading Chapter books, he is doing well with the A to Z reading program and really enjoys the RAZ kid app especially where you record your voice reading and then listen to what you read. His comprehension of what he read is really good. So we have doubled up on reading, writing and grammar in an effort to give Lawrence more experience and build confidence. I am also still adjusting the curriculum in hopes of the finding the items that "clicks" with him.
So based on my title "Our failures are also our greatest achievements" I have experienced a very different aspect of teaching and inspiring someone to learn. Lawrence was playing around with a learning app and he was intentionally and unintentionally getting problems wrong. He was enjoying the wrong answers and listening to way the chosen answer was wrong. He actually was learning from the mistakes without getting frustrated because he got it wrong. It made me realize while seeing the smile on his face with his accomplishments with doing well with math and spelling, if his failures are presented in a way that he learns something new from them, then the failures are just as important. We as a society try to protect our children from failures forgetting that these children had to fall several times before they were able to walk. That failure to move forward or stand was the driving force that made them want to try harder to reach the goal of walking even though at that point they didn't realize that was the goal. Lawrence over these last couple of weeks has taught me a lot. He has a lot of obstacles to over come but because the pressure has been removed he is able to explore at his pace. We are making a positive advancement forward, even though some is coming at a snails pace.
