Nunez - TS #16

3/10/2017, 7:00-8:15PM  
Alphabet/letters practice & sense verbs

     During our previous sessions, I noticed that Rebecca and her siblings don't really make the connection between letters, sounds, and words. One example of this was last time when I listed the days of the week on my whiteboard and erased one of them (let's say I erased Saturday) so that they could tell me which day was missing. Rebecca said "Monday." So I pointed to Monday and asked "What does this say?" to try to get her to realize that Monday was already there. I tried to sound out the word with her, but then she said "Wednesday." So I pointed to the letter "M" and asked "What letter is this?" and she said practically every letter except "M." The kids can read and write for the most part, but when I recited the alphabet with them they had some trouble. I really didn't know how to work on this with them, especially since they're at different levels and I had to find something to do that would include all of them. I ended up making a PowerPoint. It went from A-Z. Starting with the first, each odd numbered slide said "A is for..., B is for..., S is for..., etc." The next slide would have a word and a picture to complete the slide before it, like "sisters." I asked them to write down the words and circle each time the letter appeared in the word. Every few slides I would try (emphasis on try) getting the kids to tell me which letter would come next, or to give me a word starting with the next letter.
      I asked the kids if they remembered their body parts, by pointing to my ears, nose, mouth, etc. After reviewing that, I went to the next slide, which had an image of animated eyes. I asked "What's that," to which they responded, "eyes." I clicked the slide and the word appeared under the image. I clicked the slide again to show an image of an an animated monkey looking through binoculars. Then I asked "What do we use our eyes for?" They didn't understand the question (I didn't expect them to), so I demonstrated by moving my eyes around the room and gesturing outward with my hands. I repeated the question. "See" was the only one they guessed correctly without me giving them the answer. I came with the expectation that they wouldn't know any of the sense verbs, so I was relieved that the kids knew at least one already. After the slides, I had them demonstrate each new term for me. I would say something like "what do we do with our hands?" while gesturing to my hands and touching random objects on the table, and the kids would respond with "touch." This took a lot of repetition but by the end of the session, the kids were able to demonstrate each of the sense verbs to me as I said them.