Friday, December 01, 2006

Yay for Adam!!

I volunteer at Ashley's school every Friday morning. I work with kids in her class who are struggling with reading. There is a little boy named Adam who was by far the one who needed the most help. They have sight words that they're working on and pink is the lowest level. The pink sight words are ones that Ashley learned in Kindergarten- to give you an idea of the level. Anyway, Adam has a range of issues, he doesn't keep his hands to himself, follow directions etc... He get's pulled out for lots of different help during the day- but hadn't qualified for the reading specialist yet. So we've been out of school for a month and I was fully expecting him to go from knowing 25% of the words to knowing 10%. But he came out (we work in the hall) and was chomping at the bit to get to the flashcards (usually he wants to chat about everything under the sun first). He knew all but 5 of the 50!! WOW!! Then we worked on those 5 and he remembered them well enough to get 100% YAY!! I don't know what happened- he said that he had a new teacher that was working on flashcards with him (previously he'd told me that his parents wouldn't do the cards with him because they were too busy) and that he was smarter now. I praised him and gushed over his good work over and over and told him how awesome he was. I talked to the teacher about it and she said he's not seeing the reading specialist until next week. So I don't know if his parent's got a tutor for him or what- but it's certainly helping. So YAY for Adam!