This past Monday SJ had another tutoring session. He was very disagreeable. He didn't have a great day at school. His aide sent my husband and me a note about some crying he was doing in class (not acceptable). He knew we were going to be disappointed in him and he probably was worried he was going to be punished. So when I told him that Mrs. Banks had arrived, he didn't want to come downstairs. It took a lot of bribing and a little physical moving to get him to cooperate (no worries I only nudged him). I could hear him complaining and being difficult for Mrs. Banks, but I was hoping he was going to recover quickly.
She told me he was not cooperating at first, but she made a deal with him. She told him if he pulled himself together and cooperated that day and on Thursday, she would skip his tutoring session the next Monday. She said he said he seemed surprised by this deal. "Really? I won't have tutoring on Monday," he asked. "Yes, really," she said. It is a holiday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and we don't have school. He agreed to the deal and then worked nicely for her.
They started out the session with a Reader's Theater called "The Snow Is Falling" by Sheri Skelton. It had 7 characters. SJ chose Billy, David, Frederick and Georgia (he must have thought that was a boy's name and Mrs. Banks didn't correct him). It was a play where the different children describe snowflakes and the fun things you can do in the snow.
Next, they read a story about a boy and his dog. Then, SJ had to answer 8 questions about the story. He did fairly well with this activity. Some of the questions were multiple choice and some were written responses. There was a coloring page at the end of the packet. SJ thought he needed to complete that as well, but Mrs. Banks said that was just optional. He opted not to color it.
I was watching my neighbor kids on this day. They were particularly loud and rambunctious. I was trying to keep them quiet, since my husband and SJ were working. I wasn't doing a great job and SJ let me know about it. I heard SJ run up the basement stairs and then he yelled for the kids to be quiet. I reminded them to try and play a little more quietly.
Their last activity was an I Spy type picture that had a worksheet where SJ needed to look at the picture to find the answers. It was titled "Ponder the Picture of Winter". He didn't know what "ponder" meant, so she wrote "Think" overtop of it. These were some of the questions with SJ's responses.
1. What things are people doing here? hockey, skiing, sledding
2. What is on the ground that needs to be on the snowman? a stick
3. What has a checkerboard pattern on it? the hat
4. What is someone trying to catch on his or her tongue? a snowflake
5. How many animals are wearing a sweater? 1
When their session was done, Mrs. Banks told me about the deal and I apologized for the noisy conditions. She said it didn't bother her, but SJ was bothered by all the noise. She told me he did work nicely for after he settled down. I told her that her deal strategy was a great plan. I was probably going to cancel on Monday anyway, but SJ doesn't need to know that.
No comments:
Post a Comment