Knowing that Lilly, like most children, is motivated by connecting to her learning, I gave her a controlled sentence about a family activity she had just experienced earlier in the day at a local farm with a potato sack slide down a hill. Lilly joyfully read ´Sac fun on top hill,´ and then matched pictures with the words. She spent the time going over each word then searching for the right picture to represent it, even after seeming very tired earlier on in the lesson. She was very focused! I sat back and reveled in the power of making meaning in every lesson I present.

We had played with sound, paint, brushes, and pom-poms even, all great materials for multi-sensory learning and especially interesting to an artsy girl like Lilly. These activities geared towards imprinting the letter shapes and sounds in her mind work well, but can also pull Lilly into an activity that can be difficult to cease. It was very interesting that when all the ´fun stuff´ was put away and Lilly had a page of 5 sentences to read in front of her, she was the most engaged! The sentences meant something to her, she was warmed up, and she was gaining confidence in her abilities as she read, which is of course a huge motivation in itself!

When it was time for Lilly to write her own sentence, she wrote ¨Fit in pit!¨ which I didn't understand at first. Feeling very sure of herself, Lilly explained that a young child was upset while playing in the ball pit at Sky Zone…a temper tantrum is a ¨fit” and the ball pit is the ¨pit.¨ That’s thinking outside the box!!!

While illustrating words to show that we know their meanings, Lilly’s creative thinking flourished again. She drew a ball of yarn that was all tangled up to represent the word ‘not’. Again, I was a little confused, but Lilly quickly explained her thinking, a great skill, while simultaneously drawing a circle with a line through it to represent the ‘other not’. Homonyms! To my mind, she knows these homonyms, which is awesome, and she is making meaning or trying to make meaning with each word she encounters. Knowing this will help our progress as we build words and sentences. Even though the controlled sentences with only sounds we have introduced may seem dry to us, Lilly accepts the invitation to think outside the box!

I will definitely be watching out for this girl to meet every challenge she finds!

Lilly, Session 2: Meaningful Work Leads to Joyful Learning