Thursday, October 24, 2013

School Time Update - 10/24

I think you all get the idea now on what we're doing with Becca, and I have the evidence I wanted in case I need it for school, so I'll chill out again now. Over the past two weeks we've done a bunch of different things with Becca. We worked on matching animal babies with their parents, picking items from a list, some more letter work, and pushing vs. pulling. Each time she answered our questions correctly at least 75% of the time.

A highlight for me was when we put 12 pictures on a board and had Becca select pictures from the grid using partner-assisted scanning. Paula worked with her on it first, just asking simple questions and finding Becca's answer. It was more freeform than we've been able to be with her before because there were so many different choices (some food, some equipment, some TV shows, some locations). The second day was right after a trip to grandma's with lots of driving.

I asked Becca to tell me what she wanted to talk about. She picked her carseat. I asked if she liked her carseat. Immediate no. I asked if she wanted a different carseat. Immediate no. I asked if she wanted something else instead of a carseat, I joked about putting a bed in the car. Immediate yes. She looked at me like, "that's an option?!" I think she has so much she's going to start saying as soon as she has a better opportunity to.

On the letters I noticed Becca has a hard time engaging for a long time, probably because it feels so repetitive. I ask her a lot to say words or sounds in her head (a la the nonverbal reading approach) and it's not exactly fast-paced. I try to explain to her why we're working on it, and that does help some. Also I've noticed when I get Becca's sister involved and have her practice, Becca does better as well. For example, we worked on matching pictures to the words describing those pictures (candy vs. sit vs. books, working on starting sounds). Becca made it through and matched each picture to the word based on the starting sounds with only one mistake that she corrected on her own, but the last one was hard, we had to play a hand game first to help her re-engage. Then when I asked Becca's sister to go through the same matching exercise I noticed Becca would look very attentively at the right answers, even though it wasn't her turn. I need to remember this trick. I know I wouldn't like being put on the spot all the time, in school I definitely preferred answering on my own with some other kid in the hot seat.

Anyway, lots more to learn, but that's the latest update.

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