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What a crazy week! Today was amazing: I worked with the same kid today that I worked with yesterday. His teacher pointed him out when I walked in the door, told me what he needed, and he proceeded to fight me tooth and nail. He fell over in his desk, wouldn’t sharpen his pencil, ignored me…he was all around oppositional. There are a few other boys in the class that are the ODD/class clowns at his table…the kind that would make fun of him for getting help and not being able to read. I honed in on this and decided to take him outside and, once again, he broke down the wall and tried to work with me. He wasn’t overly happy and outgoing but he was willing to work. 

We were working on a project over the colonists—summary, pictures, reading, writing, the works. He hadn’t done any of it in the thirty minutes she gave the class. He couldn’t even read the title of the book. Once again I offered to write if he would read the words. He had so much trouble with the vocabulary in the book that he started to give up. I made it his choice: he can give up or he can switch off with me line by line. He choose to keep trying. Each two lines we read he would summarize for me and I would write it down. We got through the entire page together in fifteen minutes. He even read the entire half page summary to me with only one or two minor mistakes. It was easier because it was his summary, his words, just my handwriting. 

What a great end to my first week!