Which One of These Things is Not Like the Others?

Monday, Imma joined a small group of students that I've been pulling out of her teacher's class for support in reading.  I've been working with these three boys for several months and Imma has made our little group more interesting.  She's the only girl, she's loud, she's silly, oh, and she's my kid.  So that makes it a little different.  She's doing well and the boys all love her.  The group is getting along quiet nicely.
Today, we played a game where I showed them high frequency words on the iPad and they had to read the word. Whoever read the word first got a colored tile.  If it was a tie, everyone got one.  If you yelled, you didn't get one.  (This prevented Imma from getting a few that she would have otherwise gotten.)  Everyone did really well.  They are definitely picking up their high frequency words, which, ultimately, will make them better readers.  I noticed something, however, as our little game progressed.  While I can't say that it truly surprised me, I still found it quite interesting.  In the picture below, you will see the tiles accumulated by each student.  Can you tell where Imma was sitting?

Hmmm, which tiles are Imma's?

There were a few times when I had to say her name to get her attention because she was concentrating so hard on sorting and stacking those tiles.  Just another aspect of the enigma that is Imma. :)

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!

The Lizard of Poz or Reading Without Words

Tonight, Imma decided she wanted to read Lucy a bedtime story. Lucy was delighted and promptly climbed into Imma's bed, waved at me and said, "Night night, Mommy," as if I was going to let her sleep in her sister's bed! (I don't think we're quite ready for that!)  Imma picked up her favorite storybook and proclaimed, "Lucy, let me read you this story.  It's, The Lizard of Poz." She then preceded to tell Lucy the story of the Wizard of Oz, to the best of her ability, while flipping through the pages, using the pictures as her guide. Lucy was enthralled, hanging on her every word!  There's just one problem, Imma doesn't have that many words.
In fact, much of what Imma was saying wasn't really words.  It was intonation. It was speech-sounds.  It was phonemes, phonics, some syllables. Lots of rhythm and variance.  Very few words.  The only words I really understood were, "Dorothy," "Toto," "she said," and occasionally she would throw in something else that was recognizable to me.  The rest of it sounded kind of like a muffled conversation you might hear through the wall of a hotel room.  You can tell it's speech.  You can tell it's English.  But, you really have no idea what the person is saying.

Imma reading to Lucy

Lucy was ready for a sleep-over!

This is how Imma hears a lot of the conversation going on around her so it only makes sense that this is how she would tell a story.  She knows there are supposed to be lots of words. She knows her voice is supposed to go up and down and she's supposed to have different emotions.  But she really doesn't know what she's supposed to say.  So, she does the best she can and fills in the gaps with speech-sounds.
If one is simply reading a bedtime story to a two-year old sister, this is perfectly acceptable, wonderful and good.  When one is in kindergarten taking a state mandated assessment, however, that makes it a little more problematic.  Imma had her reading assessment today and she didn't do so well. She struggles with segmenting and blending words because she doesn't process sounds the same way most people do.  She struggles with comprehension and how to respond to verbal prompts because she doesn't understand what she is supposed to do.  When she listens to a story, there are more words that she doesn't understand than she does understand.  So, she has to try to infer meaning and fill in gaps in the story based on very little information.  The result?  Her teacher read her a story about some kids building a tree house. Imma thought the story was about kids climbing a tree to get apples.  There was no mention in the story about apples but she just assumed that, if there was a tree, there would be apples.  Needless to say, she didn't do so well on the test and that is unfortunate because it isn't through lack of intelligence or lack of effort.
It also isn't because of a lack of reading skills.  Imma has a lot of great pre-reading skills. She knows all of her letter names and sounds.  She  knows a lot of sight words.  She knows practically every animal name you can put in front of her. She can decode to a point but she doesn't always know how to put the words back together.  She does get frustrated easily when she's reading because she isn't sure what she's supposed to do and she doesn't take direction well in that type of situation.  She also doesn't always know the names of the objects in the pictures so that can't help her and she doesn't acquire new words easily so even if you tell her, "That's not a hat, it's a cap," she's probably not going to understand what you are telling her.
She also literally does not hear some sounds the same way we do and it's not because of a problem with her ears.  Some sounds she just doesn't process correctly.  She thinks she's saying the same thing you are. Take the word, "Wizard," for example.  She says, "Lizard."  And she thinks she is saying it the same way I am. I'll say, "It's Wizard, with a 'w', /w/."  And she'll say, "Lizard.  Yes, Mommy. Lizard."  She knows what a lizard is and she knows what a wizard is. And in other situations, I've heard her use the word wizard correctly.  But she just doesn't get that she isn't saying Wizard of Poz.  (Poz I think is coming from a blending of the last phoneme in of and the beginning sound in Oz. I mean, we are usually saying The Wizard of Foz, if you think about it.)
So, what's a mommy to do?  And, especially, what's a Reading Specialist Mommy who spends at least seven hours a day teaching other children how to read, to do? It's really difficult for me to teach Imma and most teacher will tell you, teaching your own child is always challenging.  It makes it even more frustrating and depressing when I know she's doing everything she can and she just cannot overcome this obstacle right now.
And I do think it is just for right now.  I know she'll learn to read. And I really hope it is before the big mandated state testing begins in third grade where it could potentially affect the rest of her life.  We have amazing teachers at my school who will do everything they can to help her but this is going to be a huge challenge for this little girl.
If you have been through a similar situation, I would love to hear about it!  What challenges have you and your child had to work through?