Start of Literacy

I'm almost done with my schooling for the year, besides an online course. I'm starting to make my plan around what to concentrate on with Brian during the summer. I'm excited to start making my own teaching plans with him again and implementing them. I have let a lot of that go as I concentrated on my own schoolwork during this past year. I missed teaching Brian as much I use to and I sometimes am hard on myself as I believe some of his regression this year was my own fault.

I could start simple but sometimes I think that happens to him too often. I'm not going to concentrate on matching and sorting, like some of his other workers do. Yes, those are great skills to have and they are the pre-skills to many future skills. But, I know that he knows those skills. He has shown he has those skills. He doesn't do it consistently which is why it still gets worked on but I honestly feel he could master them easily if he wanted to.

Earlier in the day I made a paper keyboard for him. I started using it by asking him his name. I wanted him to spell "Brian", but he kept pointing to the "N" which I assumed was because he knew "name" started with an "N". I would then say, "Spell Brian. Start with B." and he would then successfully spell his name. Then I would say, "How old are you?". I would wait him out and tell him, "Show me six." He would then point to the number "6" at the top of the keyboard.

An hour later I brought the keyboard back to Brian and repeated the two questions again. I had the same experience with his name but when I asked him how old he was he pointed to the "S", said "S", pointed to the "X", and said "X". Coincidence? Maybe, but I always think positively in these situations.

It was our first day using the paper keyboard and I thought it was quite successful for the first day. So I decided to push it even more. I decided to work a program around his favorite book, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear", by Eric Carle. I made flash cards with the colors of the animals in the book. We read the book and then I laid out the cards and didn't ask him, "Where's the purple?", but instead asked him, "What color is the cat?". I wasn't expecting him to get it right, I didn't even go over the flashcards before hand to tell him what each word was. I was just curious as to what he would do. And here is what he did.



Was it perfect? No. But I think he understood what we were doing and he did get a few right. Am I messing him up so now he thinks "cat" is spelled "purple"? I hope not!