A week ago I received Kai’s first term report, and our ten minute teacher-parent feedback session was cut short due to some impatient parent knocking on the door, and us actually needing more than ten minutes…

A few days later, sitting in Kai’s classroom, going over his work with his teacher, concern etched out on her face. “He failed his phonics and his sentences doesn’t make sense” 11/23 for his phonics assessment.

Looking at his book I wasn’t too concerned, because I understood why he got 0/4 for:

Write one more rhyming word in each row:
dish             wish                 cach
clock           sock                  bed
hatch          latch                 wisht
bend           spend               spnd

You, see he doesn’t quite yet understand the concept of “rhyming words” and I know he struggled with this when he did his most recent speech and language assessment. Guess this is what we will be focusing on in the new term. Then his teacher showed me his sentences for:

Write a sentence using each of these words.

shop –  I went to the shop with momy And with black. (1/2) – after asking him to tell me about “black”, it turns out this is a character in Batman?!

with: I went with momy to worck. (1/2)

black: I went to the black mosk. (1/2) Again, he was referring to the character in Batman?!

Apart from this, he is doing exceptionally well in school and I am not fazed at all about his teacher’s concerns because I understand his reasoning. Sitting with his teacher, I explained that we can only help him if we understand the context of his answers. Hence me asking him about his sentences.

See, if his teacher knew he was referring to a “Batman character” then his sentences would make perfect sense. I know he is a great story teller and just knew that his “strange” sentences had great meaning to him.

His spelling is also very good, during speech and language we focused a lot on “language rules”, the 6 vowels (a, e, i, o, u and oo), etc.

And, because I know he is an enthusiastic story teller and want to encourage him to tell more stories and complement the speech and language therapy work that we do, I’ve asked him to be a “featured Blogger” on my blog!

I will type his stories as he tells it, reading it back to him and helping him along the way, ensuring he has all the elements present in his sentences that makes a good sentence e.g.  adjectives and nouns (what we’ve been working on in the first term).

I’m not reading this post to him. I’m sharing with you my sneaky homework tactics, shhhh.

You can read his first blog post here, enjoy.