Today was so much fun! Our student came in a little tired, but ready to learn!
The focus of today’s lesson was on Spring, but before moving into our Spring theme, our group wanted to finish up the activities from last session.
We started with our Stop, Go, Slow stoplight activity. This time, however, us teachers read aloud while the student followed along and hit either the ‘SLOW’ or ‘STOP’ buttons depending on the punctuation. This was even more effective than the last time because it forced our student to slow down and focus on the punctuation without being distracted by the competition of the game.
The next activity was reading at the student’s instructional level. He read chapter 3 from the book, ‘The Million Dollar Shot,’ aloud to us. This was challenging, but he did great!
He struggled with a few words, but used his ‘sounding out’ skills helped him to understand words he struggled with, for example: chocolate [ch-ah-coh-let].
One thing we noticed with this activity was his energy level. As he read, he rested his head on the table. Though he kept reading, it was something we noted. Perhaps he was having an off day, so we’re hoping next time will be better!
After reading, we took a short walk to refresh and refocus our student. During the walk, we asked him about Spring—what are some things he likes about Spring, what happens in Spring, what the weather is like, etc. He said things about bees, butterflies, flowers, warm weather, and sunshine. This led perfectly into the next activity: our honeycomb cereal snack with bumblebee drawing and 12 Days of Springtime rhyming book. We read/sang the 12 Days of Springtime aloud together which helped the student pick up on rhyme while reading at a quicker pace to keep up with the song.
Our final activity was a writing activity. The student was asked to write two sentences about rhyme and what he learned. He said that he learned rhyme isn’t only about the last letters, but rather the sounds. This was exciting to see that he had learned something so profound in such a short time! We also had him write a sentence predicting what we would do in the next session—he said reading Dr. Seuss—so that’s our plan!