Time to Hit the Books!

I've decided to take the bull by the horns, hunker down, bite the bullet, and move full speed ahead!  I'm going to teach Imma to read--if it kills me! And after two days of fairly intense tutoring, uhm, well, I'm not dead but I am a little exhausted.  I think she probably is, too.  But I feel like she should be reading by now.  She's had the same skill level for a while and she has all of the basics she needs to be able to do it.  I just have to find a way to make her understand what she's supposed to do!
So, yesterday I got out a book that was a little bit too hard for her.  There were a lot of words that she already knew and several that she didn't.  Whenever she got to a word that she didn't know, I did the same thing I do with all of my students. I asked her to look at the first letter and get her mouth ready for that sound.  Her response--laugh hysterically in a goofy voice.  Okay--different approach!  What letter is this?  She barks like a dog and snarls out me.  Imma?  Imma!  IMMA! Finally, after about 10 times of asking, "what sound does this letter make?  This one. No this one right here.  Imma?  Imma! You know this letter, you know this letter!" she would finally give me the information I was asking for.  And it isn't because she doesn't know her letters or letter sounds.  I don't know if it is because she just didn't know what I wanted, she was just burned out and being silly, or if she is just a toot, but she should have been able to answer my questions very quickly and she wouldn't. After about twenty minutes, we finally got through the book with no blood and only a few tears.
I asked one of her teachers this morning if she responded to her this way and she said no (thank God!) She said she laughs sometimes but she's never barked at her or done some of the other annoying things she was doing for me.  I don't know if they are asking her to do the same things that I am doing either.  All teachers have their own methods of teaching reading so they may not be teaching her the same way that I am attempting to.  I have had a lot of success with my approach and I'm going to keep trying with her because I'm hopeful that I'll find a way to reach her.  Today went much better but that might be because we worked on it before school when she wasn't as tired instead of after school. I also brought her to my reading table at school so I think she was taking it a little more seriously.
This isn't at all to imply that I don't think her teachers are doing an excellent job or that I feel like they aren't doing everything they can because I know they are.  I just have very high expectations for her and I really hated seeing her name sooooo far down on the list of kindergartners when I rank ordered their test scores. (I did that because it's my job, not because I am obsessed with her test scores, just FYI). So, I've  just decided to move into high gear and use all of the methods I use with all of my non-reading struggling students and see if any of those make her understand what she is supposed to do when she comes to a word that she doesn't know.  Right now, she's just learning words, one at a time, and while that would be fine, it will take a long time.  I'm hoping she'll figure out that, since she knows her letter sounds, she should be able to put those together and start decoding words.  As of right now, she isn't getting that and I'm trying to find a way to explain it to her so she does get it.
With that in mind, we will try again tomorrow!  Wish us luck!