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This year, I had the opportunity to work with a 7th grade student as a private tutor. Although I don't have much time to spare for private students this year, "Lily" as I will call her, was so motivated, and I was so touched by her desire to read, but her inability and frustration, that I decided to try to work with her.Because Lily is so highly motivated, I meet with her every two weeks for 1 1/2 hours. We change activities frequently, and she is assigned different work to do in the intervening time that requires her to practice what we learn on an almost daily basis.
During my assessment of Lily, I learned that she was not familiar with 8 consonants; that she was confused about most of the rest; that she was unable to deal with ambiguous consonants; and had no knowledge of how vowels worked in words. She also had very little ability to speak or understand English. I found this surprising since she had been in the "best" group in each of her English classes over the years, but was having problems functioning in the 7th grade highest level, where she was primarily memorizing vocabulary and grammar. I encouraged her to ask to be placed in the non-readers group despite the fact that she had more motivation and was a model student in terms of her behavior. However, her continual efforts to memorize words that she could not read were placing a tremendous burden on her. She and her mother described to me her history of dyslexia in her other subjects, and how it had been undetected in middle school. This also put a tremendous burden on her.
When we started our lesson, I hoped to begin with easy conversation, but Lily had no conversation skills. But Lily loves to draw. I asked Lily to draw a dream for me for the next time we met, and to label any words that she knew in English. She was very enthusiastic about this assignment and returned with a very expressive drawing, but with only one word in English. We started to identify the objects, thoughts and conversation in the picture and to build a "word box" alongside of each picture. As we encountered new rules for words, Lily would write them in her "Pictionary"--the new word along with the rule. As we encountered difficult consonants, I found that "sandpaper" letters worked well. I have a set of letters cut out of fine sandpaper that are glued to polygal cards. The student says the sound of the letter as she traces the sandpaper. Lily became so enthusiastic about this approach that she and her father made her own set of letters that she had problems with, and she used them during our sessions.
Some letters require even more sensory input. Lily learned to put her hand in front of her mouth so that she could feel the air expulsed every time she said a word with an "h"; and to put her finger in front of her lips to feel her tongue touch it every time she said "th". Over the course of a few sessions, she began correcting herself automatically, and started using these devices interchangeably when she would encounter a new word.
Lily reviews the material that we learn together frequently, so she is very amenable to learning language awareness rules. One day she advised me that she felt she was really catching on--she told me that she never knew that there were rules for letters and words in English, and that everything was much simpler as she learned these rules. This is not the first time that I have heard about this problem from my students. I have read a great deal about children's recoding problems--perhaps teachers assume that good students will naturally pick up the rules without pointing them out to them. However, when learning a foreign language, especially one that differs so dramatically from their native Hebrew, I think this is more difficult. I have found that my students feel much more secure trying to understand "how" to do language awareness, as well as many other reading comprehension tasks, rather than absorbing this as a subliminal message.
Lily's greatest love is to read stories. I chose a sixth grade reader for her, Stories for Everyone, by Shoshana Postol. Lily picks her own story--and we spend at least one session predicting what will happen. I pick out words and make a list of different CVC and other combinations which are placed under a rule. Every time Lily encounters a word that she has problems with, she looks for the word on her list. As we have accumulated stories, old words that she has learned help her to sound out new words according to the rule. (I found out very early that one of Lily's strongest learning styles is connecting sounds and letters to images from her picture dreams and stories.)
Once we have covered a paragraph or two of a new story, I ask Lily to listen to me read the story on tape, as she reads the story. Then she must tape herself reading the story. At the beginning, Lily was unable to read more than one or two words correctly. Now she is reading most of the story. She has also stopped guessing words after reading only the first few letters.
I was concerned that Lily would not be able to transfer her knowledge from one story to another. So I made her word lists cumulative. By referring back to words in prior stories, she was also able to negotiate new stories, and at a much faster pace.
After the first five sessions, I began to work with Lily on reading comprehension. I learned that Lily had not had any exposure to these strategies previously. We first focused on "Wh" questions, and gradually built up knowledge about the purpose of each of the question words. Lily avoided working on Wh words and questions for awhile--she seemed very frightened that it would be too hard for her. But when I insisted, and we began to break down the meaning and use of each WH word, she began to like it and use it in our opening conversations. Connecting these question words to reading comprehension questions became much easier--she also has a reference sheet in case she gets confused. Any question that does not fit with the rule is explained as an "exception"--the same approach we take with language awareness rules. Lily accepts this and masters the problem more easily than I expected.
Since our sessions are long, and Lily still has problems with speaking and listening comprehension, I have supplemented this work with Jazz Chants, by Carolyn Graham. Lily picks her own subject, and based on the material in the teacher's notes, or additional material that I devise, we enjoy chanting, as well as picking up language information.
As I build language awareness work for Lily, I use the texts that I mentioned in my article about high school students--Starting Over and the Explode the Code series, all published by Educators Publishing Service.
Ellen Hoffenberg-Serfaty
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