I was off tutoring. So I guess it's time to give my usual report.
The girl went first. We did fill-in-the-blanks. (I had 3, and she chose one.)
Then we read the little books from school They are still very simple, but they have harder words in them now -- and they aren't words I'd choose first for her to learn. For instance, they called a windowsill a window ledge, so I had to explain "ledge." That's one of her words to learn. Actually, though, that book had a bit more plot than the others. It had a giant orange tail that filled the house. It named the places the tail was -- like the window ledge. It turns out that it was a dollhouse with a cat sleeping on top of it, and the little dolls and furniture made the tail look huge. Sort of a neat concept.
Then she read some of the reading comprehension stuff I printed out. She did really well, though we found more words she didn't know.
After that, we called in her brother for another competitive word search. Actually, 2, since when they finished, they both wanted another one. I had made one with all the synonyms of the boy's favorite word, "stupid." He asked me why "slow" was there, and I said, you know, like someone who takes longer to learn something? They are slower than others. I think another word search should be based on the word "impossible," since when he finds something difficult, his favorite thing is to say, "This is impossible!" His father said I should report if the boy says this. He was told to say it's hard, but not to say it's impossible. Still, he says it every once in a while. I correct him and say he can do it, but I'm not going to report him to his dad for saying it.
Speaking of which, last time his younger sister won both word searches. One reason is because the boy's so distractible. I explained this to him. I said he has to focus on it, not wonder if his sister found more words, ask her if she found a certain word, etc. He needs to just find the words. So this time, we had a rule that the word searches had to be done in silence. This meant the girl had to stop thinking aloud. While she looks for letter combinations, she says them out loud. I told her to think them instead of saying them. That's a good skill to learn, too, and one I hadn't addressed before.
So, I won't leave you in suspense. The girl won the first one, and it was a tie for the second. The boy found a word and forgot to cross it out on the list, so he actually probably won, but he thought his sister did since she finished first. Meanwhile, he was busy looking for that word he had already found. So they called that one a tie.
Then it was the boy's turn. He did a fill-in-the-blnks, then we did some reading comprehension. The first one I chose, and it was challenging for him, but not "impossible." So I let him choose the 2nd one, and he picked something his sister would have breezed
through, so of course he did, too. He answered all the questions on both correctly, though on the first one, he had to look back to get the answer a few times.
Then it was time for me to go. The boy opted to not do a Mad Libs. That's just as well, as I'm running out of them.
