Little Lilly was busily working on a macrame bracelet when I arrived, and wasn’t sure she was ready to switch gears for tutoring time. I took a moment to share a new ‘On Task’ chart with mom, Stella, for Lilly to overhear. The chart, pasted to Lilly’s tutoring folder, has 3 pictures: one of a beautiful dining room table like our work location in Lilly’s home, one of a ribbon for ‘trying your best’, and one of a ballerina showing ‘finished work’. 

Lilly and I will use this personalized executive functioning tool to cue on task behaviors and provide a visual for self evaluation discussions at the end of each task. Lily enjoyed comparing the picture of a dining room table to her actual dining room very much! I was glad she took the time to focus on this so we could briefly discuss the expectation of staying seated or at least very close to the table during our session. This signal, on the folder, poised in an upright position in front of us throughout the session, it worked like a charm! Lilly left about a quarter of the number times she did last session, and for much less time! Last Thursday Lilly left the area 6 to 8 times, to visit family members, go to the bathroom, and take a break. I had mentioned in our first and second visits together that taking a break was fine. But after the last session, I knew I needed to limit this in order for us to have truly productive and effective work periods. Today, Lilly moved towards the stairwell once to wish her little brother a nice nap, towards the living room once to find a book to show me, and towards the kitchen once to alert her mom of her little brother’s callings from his room. She was quick, which showed me that her executive functioning was on board!

To inspire Lilly to move from macrame to reading time with me, her mom, Stella, provided a skilled transition by empathizing with Lilly about her own difficulty putting down art projects and assuring her that she would ‘guard’ her bracelet while she went into the other room with me. Lilly pranced to the dining room and looked at her books, bringing me a ‘Magic Kitten’ book. After discussing it briefly, we began our work with a rubber ear, about the size of Lilly’s hand. She holds this while we do our phonological awareness activities.

Lilly handedly identified rhymes, initial sounds in words, and final sounds in words. She reviewed the expectations on our chart and decided she deserved a hole punch on her reward card. (10 punches earns a trip to the prize bin) I believe the real motivation for reading with me is intrinsic for Lilly, because her interest in books is so high, however, I incorporate the prize bin as an added incentive for her executive functioning work.

Next we ‘built words’ with 3 sounds each, represented on small cardstock letters, and matching pictures for the words. The method of providing the letters, or sound pictures, and a picture of the word as well as telling Lilly the word we will build, gives her full access to the sounds and how to produce the correctly spelled word. For Lilly, this method is golden!! I knew it would be an ideal approach for her, as her mother had informed me in our first conversation that Lilly lacks confidence in her reading skills. Her confidence was growing like a weed today! After building 4 words, Lilly wanted more words! Next time we meet I will certainly have many more words prepared for her. At this point I had been planning to keep the ‘load’ low so as not to overwhelm her. Lesson learned for me, now that she is comfortable with the method, and responding well to the ‘on task’ chart, more work is possible! I told her I’d bring more words to build next time!

After word building came our matching game of pictures and words, which stimulated Lilly’s joy of competition because she found all of the 4 matches without me even getting a turn! Perfect! She was asking for more matching, so I told her we could play again after we read our sentences. She gave herself a hole punch for finishing her matching game, staying near the table, and trying her best.

Sentence reading was a bit more of a guessing game for Lilly last session, whereas this time, with her attention focused, as well as less material on the page, she truly internalized the experience of reading! She read each word, then read the sentences back to herself. She read them more than I was asking her to do. Blending 3 sounds is a challenge for Lilly, but it’s a ‘just right’ challenge. She moved through words like ‘map’ and ‘on’ with more ease than ‘hot’ and ‘hit’, but she remained engaged until she got it! Thrilling! Instead of illustrating the sentences to demonstrate comprehension, I provided a selection of pictures on index cards for Lilly to physically choose from. She showed ‘a fat cop hit it’ with 2 pictures, one of a hefty police officer and one of a car backing into a post. She proceeded this way with all 3 sentences, choosing pictures instead of taking the time to draw them. While Lilly is an artist, and might like to draw pictures, she took a lot of time last session extending the drawing time into a doodling session. I offered her a choice between drawing and choosing pictures, and she chose to use the photographs. Great choice because, again, her full attention was on the goal of reading and comprehending.

We played another matching game, this time with 7 words, as per Lilly’s request for more words! She turned over a word card, read the word, and then turned over a picture card to seek a match. This time, Lilly didn’t even keep score of who had more matches!  She just read the words and when either of us located a picture to correspond with a word, she’d place the word on the picture and put it back in the middle of the table.  Fully focused, engaged, and learning by discovery.

By the end of the session, Lilly still had 2 spaces to go on her hole punch card, but seemed more concerned about finding a book about her favorite animal, the cheetah, to show me for next time. I had mentioned earlier that she had been as fast as a cheetah when she returned from the other room, which prompted Lilly to mention the book she owns on the topic. We wrote a note together to remind her to look for the book; I wrote ‘cheetah’ saying each sound as I wrote it, Lilly looking on, and she took the pencil and wrote the word book. I knew she was familiar with the word ‘book’ because her mom had used it as one of their focus words when buddy reading. She did know she needed a ‘b’ and an ‘o’ … I told her to add another ‘o’ to show the sound /oo/, and the /k/ sound, using the ‘what do you hear right here?’ method. She wrote a ‘c’ but I corrected her, explaining that the ‘c’ does show the /k/ sound but sometimes a ‘k’ is needed to show the /k/ sound. She proudly erased the ‘c’ and wrote beautifully formed ‘k’!

My motto is ‘joy in every session’, as you know. I’m not sure who experienced more joy today, myself or my newest client!