Audrey, meaning noble strength, was a fourth grader that year. Audrey had an emotional, anxiety struggle that was a barrier to learning. Her parents were fighting frequently and she feared a possible divorce. She had frequent tummy aches during the school day. Her teacher learned to let her come visit me when it hurt. Somehow she always came when I had no other students in the room. We just spent time together, but she also asked me to pray for her tummy. God always healed it according to her sweet young faith. She would begin to find the peace of God and untangle her fears. I was inspired by her faith.
Instruction – Multisensory and systematic approach
Audrey also came to my classroom with several other fourth grade students all with specific learning disabilities for regularly scheduled academic times. We were practicing:
letter sounds, sounding out words and reading very old reading books (designed for students who had memorized all the words in them as sight words before they started the pages.) The books were not known for being fun to read, but the group often found reasons to laugh together. We also took time at least once or twice to have each student dictate a story to me, and I wrote it down on separate pages, and bound them into books. Later, the students took class time to illustrate these stories. After I proudly read each of these stories out loud to the group, each of the students practiced reading their own books. Every reader was able to have a turn reading the other’s creations. They all had nice things to say about the books. Later in the school year, we had all of these books in the school library on display to show other students how proud we were. Audrey and several others in the group made progress in reading, writing and spelling – not amazing, miraculous progress, but still our data showed progress that other professionals deemed as satisfactory.
Contrasting high success with low success students
Another girl I taught in that group was Mia. Mia had a very different specific learning disability. I wish I had known then what I know now, because Mia was a diligent student, extremely hardworking and perfectionistic. She gave me 115% effort every day, but we made essentially no measurable progress in reading. I LIKED Mia. It would have been hard not to like her. She was the teacher’s dream student in every way except that try as she might, nothing we did helped her. I think she needed some more multi-sensory methods I learned to use later. These girls have motivated much of my push to try as many research proven methods as I have.
Some things we did that worked
- letter sounds
- sounding out words
- practicing reading
- laugh together
- dictated a story to me, and I wrote it down on separate pages, and bound them into books. Later, the students took class time to illustrate these stories.
- practiced reading their own books.
- prayer with the child’s faith and request (I didn’t initiate the prayer)
I have learned a number of ways to make all of this more engaging and more fun over the years. Let me know if I can help you with your child’s learning.
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