I started instruction in Fundamentals in Sentence Writing in January 2022 with one female student. She is 9 years old, being tested for special education services, and has ADHD. We completed our last lesson on March 6, 2022, so the instructional timeframe was approximately two months.
My student had difficulty with remaining on task during instruction. We used fidgits, alternative seating, chunking of instruction, I scribed for her, and she would select a different color pen for each lesson. These strategies seemed to help in keeping her on task. Since she needed a scribe when writing a sentence, I should have scribed each learning sheet that had sentence completion on them. Sometimes she requested to do it. Other times I wanted to see how she did but feel I should have scribed most of the sheets. I believe this would have been much more helpful for my student.
She did really well when given pictures to assist in creating sentences for learning sheets 25. She did an amazing job coming up with sentences when using pictures as a visual. Continuing with picture prompts such as those would be a great tool to use during future instruction.
My student would scribble out the prepostitional phrases or infinitives. A future fix for this could be to just use a highlighter instead of a mark through. A highlighter would have allowed us to continue to see what was written and still mark the phrase.
In more than one situation, I followed the students lead. On learning sheet 5, she was adamant that she did not need nor want us to go through a guided practice. That, after the instruction, she could do it independently. I did not do the guided practice and she was correct. She did not need it for that lesson. She received a perfect score.
I have noted on some learning sheets 'VP.' This means she required some type of verbal prompt to come to the correct answer. I would give her the prompt and counted as incorrect when scoring. I have found it to be easier to teach what we want them to learn than to unteach mistakes.
My student had difficulty with remaining on task during instruction. We used fidgits, alternative seating, chunking of instruction, I scribed for her, and she would select a different color pen for each lesson. These strategies seemed to help in keeping her on task. Since she needed a scribe when writing a sentence, I should have scribed each learning sheet that had sentence completion on them. Sometimes she requested to do it. Other times I wanted to see how she did but feel I should have scribed most of the sheets. I believe this would have been much more helpful for my student.
She did really well when given pictures to assist in creating sentences for learning sheets 25. She did an amazing job coming up with sentences when using pictures as a visual. Continuing with picture prompts such as those would be a great tool to use during future instruction.
My student would scribble out the prepostitional phrases or infinitives. A future fix for this could be to just use a highlighter instead of a mark through. A highlighter would have allowed us to continue to see what was written and still mark the phrase.
In more than one situation, I followed the students lead. On learning sheet 5, she was adamant that she did not need nor want us to go through a guided practice. That, after the instruction, she could do it independently. I did not do the guided practice and she was correct. She did not need it for that lesson. She received a perfect score.
I have noted on some learning sheets 'VP.' This means she required some type of verbal prompt to come to the correct answer. I would give her the prompt and counted as incorrect when scoring. I have found it to be easier to teach what we want them to learn than to unteach mistakes.