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Joey’s Insights

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Moments of Joey sharing his thoughts.

Joey and I were enjoying the Ninja Red Riding Hood and Three Ninja Pigs books, and so I thought I’d introduce another spin on the Red Riding Hood tale. Joey seemed excited at first, but shortly after beginning the book – The Cat, The Dog, Little Red, The Exploding Eggs, The Wolf, and Grandma, it was clear that this story was not nearly as interesting to him as the Ninja series. This book, by Diane Fox, tells the Red Riding Hood story from the perspective of a cat and a dog arguing over the story. The cat is trying to read the story, while the dog interrupts with questions and silly assumptions. Unfortunately, as we read, I realized this story has an older sense of humor than Joey is interested in.  [Read more…]

When Presuming Competence Gets Hard

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There are times when presuming competence is easy. Joey has a light in his eyes, and he’s clearly trying to tell me something. He giggles and laughs, and persists in finding the right answer. We’re connected, and I know he’s trying to find the right word.

Other times, it’s not that easy. He knows his numbers and letters. I know he knows them. I have data that reflects this. So what’s up today – why is he selecting every number but the one I’m asking him? 

Has he regressed? Is he having trouble lining up his eyes with his device? Is he bored? Is he rebelling? Did he hear my question? Did I just imagine that he knew his numbers and letters last spring? There are times it is easy for that last question to slip into our thoughts when we are working with students like Joey. For some reason, the worst thing that we can imagine as special education teachers is that we give a student credit for doing something they cannot do. And so, in the world of self-protection to our own egos, we are more likely to assume a student can’t do something than can do something. [Read more…]

Learning High Frequency Words

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Now that Joey is in kindergarten, it is time for him to begin to learn to recognize some high frequency or sight words. Schools I’ve worked in previously have liked for kindergarten students to know about 25 of these common words by the end of the year. After watching Joey confidently learn his letters and letter sounds, I started to feel that Joey was ready for this next step this summer. I introduced them slowly at first, but now I am working on a new one each week.

When I taught kindergarten and first grade, we would learn one of these words in connection with a book or poem we were reading. We would first read the text, then identify the smaller word within the text. We’d break the word up into pieces, talk about what we notice about the word, and decide where it should go on our classroom word wall. We would clap the word, snap the word, cheer the word, and put it up on our wall where we would then practice it every day for a week. We knew those words. We’d write the word on a sentence strip inside a familiar poem or song we all knew, and we’d put that into a reading center that we could practice putting in order. [Read more…]

Making a Monster (Art Project)

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After reading and studying the silly Monster Trouble by Lane Fredrickson, I wanted Joey to be able to create his own crazy monster. Art projects can be tough due to Joey’s limited control of his motor movements, but he always seems to enjoy them.

Whenever we complete an art project, I want Joey to feel as much control over the project as possible. The idea of a project is to give Joey an opportunity to form an idea in his head and then watch it come to life on paper. I don’t want to use any pre-cut shapes to glue onto a paper, because that takes away from just one more decision Joey has the opportunity to make.  [Read more…]

Initiating vs Responding in Communication

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When we talk about reciprocal communication, we think about having a conversation when one person speaks, someone replies, then the initial speaker follows up. Harvard’s Center for the Developing Child refers to this as “Serve and Return”, and Dr. Stanley Greenspan coined the term “circles of communication”. These reciprocal interactions occur outside of verbal communication and start as early as infants cooing at their mothers, or reaching their arm out to touch their mother’s nose. [Read more…]

Saturday Serenade

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Test post for Saturday Serenades https://www.musichealsglennjan.com/saturday-serenades

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