Time Flies

So much for my plan to post more often here at A Time to Talk!

First grade has been humming along quite nicely. We still have bumps in the road - all receptive language related - but overall, I am very pleased with Hannah's progress this school year. Her language has grown considerably, with the greatest increases in phonological areas and in comprehension.

Here are a few successes from this school year:

• Comprehension. Working diligently on reading comprehension has helped immeasurably in her oral comprehension as well. Her ability to think about what she just read or about what she just heard before responding has improved so much. One of her favorite things this year is to find "the directions", read them and then do what is asked for without guidance from me. This may not seem like a huge deal for some, but it is for us.
• Penmanship. First of all her letters and numbers for the most part are now all facing the appropriate directions. She has also improved greatly in keeping her letters more uniform in size and sitting on the line.
  
• Grammar. I was apprehensive about introducing grammar, when language in general is a challenge for Hannah. I started noticing though she seemed to have an excellent intuition for building grammatically correct sentences, so I introduced the concept of parts of speech. We started with nouns, and initially (for about a day), I thought we were going to be stuck on this concept. The next day, she was pointing out everything that falls into the noun category and then telling me if it was a person, place or a thing. The next day she was explaining plural nouns to me and what it means. So now we are doing grammar everyday, because she reminds me if I try to skip that subject!
  
• Geography of the United States. We just started this subject, and plan on continuing this one through the summer. We are going to spend a week on each state (in order of their joining the Union). Our base resource for each state is our 50-state quarter collection. We joined the subscription from the US Mint when they first started, and have two wonderful binders now full of the quarters, postage stamps and great information on each state. This is a fun and educational tool for us.
  

Obviously we still have areas of struggle (especially math), but all subjects are seeing positive growth (some more than others).

I need to do another post soon about more of our resources and processes that we have been using this year. It is likely that I have learned just as much this year as Hannah has! My learning of course is more about process and outcome, and I am feeling more confident as we wrap up this school year and prepare for second grade!

OneMom

Teaching Comprehension - Part 2

In the previous post I discussed the challenges of teaching reading comprehension to a child with a mixed receptive/expressive language disorder. Today I want to give you some examples of what we are doing in homeschool to help facilitate Hannah's comprehension of the written word. Basically, I am teaching her critical thinking and how to be aware of the "who, what, where, when, why and how" as she reads (and as she communicates verbally with others as well).

First, some reminders: my daughter turned 7 years old in December, so we are in first grade. With the severity of her language disorder, I try to balance her work with what challenges her but still allows a level of success. She is reaching a point where she knows she should understand and gets very frustrated when she doesn't understand. Mostly I am using materials that are grade appropriate (first grade), but I am utilizing workbooks that are kindergarten level as well to help improve certain skills (such as penmanship and of course comprehension).

Word Webs

Using word webs is proving very helpful for us in improving comprehension, because Hannah is a visual learner. Following are two photos to demonstrate what we do:


For now, we are building word webs that are based on very simple text and in which it is easy to find descriptors and answers to the wh- questions. In this first picture, I have put Biscuit at the center of the web (Biscuit is the puppy in the book). Then I asked Hannah what does she know about Biscuit after reading the short text on that page. She learned that Biscuit is yellow and he is small, so the words "yellow" and "small" were added to the web.

In this picture, you can see that many words were added to the word web by the end of the story. She identified words that described Biscuit, words about what Biscuit wanted and what he wanted to do.

For word webs, we are using a small whiteboard with special whiteboard crayons (dry erase markers are too smelly and too messy for me). I found them at my favorite "non-chain" office supply store, Miller Pads and Papers.

Workbooks

Not every child enjoys workbooks, but I have found that Hannah likes them very much. One benefit of workbooks is that they give plenty of opportunity for repeated practice of various skills. They also give her practice in following directions, along with penmanship and other fine motor skills.

As she reads the text, the directions, and then has to answer questions on the page with her pencil or crayon, the workbooks serve as a quick assessment tool for me to determine where her understanding is solid and where we still need work. After trying some sample pages from various companies, I settled on the spectrum workbook series from School Specialty Publishing. You don't have to purchase them online though, I actually picked up our first ones at the local Staples store (you'll find them in the section with the crayons and other school-type supplies.

On the left page there is a short story with four pictures. On the facing page there are questions to answer. She filled in the blanks on some, circled pictures and completed a sequencing exercise at the bottom of the page (which happened first, second, last). Sequencing is another useful tool in helping Hannah to learn to think critically.

Here are some of the workbooks we are using.

I hope this information is useful. As always, if you have questions or need more details, please leave a comment and I'll share more with you about what is working for us, especially in the area of comprehension. I will have more on reading in the coming days, along with details on what we are using for math studies.

OneMom

Teaching Language vs Teaching Comprehension

I have spent a fair amount of my life singing with community choruses and oratorio societies. Many of the pieces I sang were in Latin, Italian and German. I was able to learn and sing these selections with great ability and emotion, without having a clue what the words meant. The conductor would give us guidance to emotions and general themes of each work, but the meaning of each word was non-existent for most of us singing in the chorus.

So, I can sing in Latin, Italian and German, but if I were to travel to Italy or Germany, I would not be able to communicate in these languages at any level. This is a good picture of what it is like working with a child with a severe mixed receptive/expressive language disorder.

When Hannah was small, our early language work focused on building vocabulary - spoken and understood. Nouns were the emphasis in those days, and while it was time consuming, we made good progress. Nouns are easy to teach (relatively speaking) because there is a concrete object to attach the word to. Moving into verbs was a little more challenging, but through demonstration (sit/stand; walk/run), progress was made there as well.

Our language is much more than concrete images and thoughts, it is filled with subtle nuances and inferences. When a child has a language disorder that includes difficulty with receptive language, the challenge becomes more profound as the child gets older and is dealing with more complex language environments, be they social or written.

Comprehension has always been our greatest challenge with Hannah, and though we make progress everyday, even at the age of 7, it is comprehension that remains the biggest wall we are trying to scale. Presently we are focusing a lot of our school time on reading comprehension and critical thinking. We are using various tasks to help with this, such as visual word webs and sequencing exercises, but it is slow going right now.

As mom and teacher, I continue to hope each day that we're going to break through whatever snag is in Hannah's brain that makes this part of language so difficult. Until that day, I must help her to build on the foundation we have already laid. I also find that there is a very fine line between challenging her to learn and grow in language, and frustrating her to tears. I shed a few tears in frustration some days as well.

Will keep you posted. Also, anyone with tips and suggestions for how you've worked on comprehension, please share them! We need to help each other through this journey.

OneMom