Wrapping Up Kindergarten
I can’t believe Charlotte is almost done with her Kindergarten year!
The above pic was from after her end of year school performance where she sang her heart out on stage with all her Kindergarten peers. Full of smiles and personality, what a joy it was for us all to watch her do her thing!
From day one to now, Charlotte has had AMAZING strides. From learning to count to 100 and memorizing 30 sight words to learning the names of all her classmates and building new friendships = AMAZING!!!
I just LOVE this image. The fact humans who are born deaf can learn to hear and speak through technology is something we should all be shouting from the mountain tops!!!
Charlotte qualified for a new IEP service this year. Previously only qualifying for speech therapy services under articulation needs, her Kindergarten teacher, speech teacher and I all agreed her reading and phonemic awareness was a concern.
After being evaluated, it was agreed she needed supplemental instruction. I was thrilled to learn it would start immediately, and we didn’t need to wait until first grade!
Below are the email updates from her speech/ articulation teacher, as well as her deaf and hard of hearing teacher discussing her progress this week.
Deaf And Hard Of Hearing Teacher
Charlotte completed her K5 reading assessment today. I have attached a copy for your review. We have been working on it for a short time during each session. The purpose of this assessment is to identify an appropriate instructional level for various reading skills within the K5 computer program. The program then begins presenting her with fun instructional activities, and continually assesses her errors and determines when she has mastered each individual skill. I use this as a supplement to other instruction. It provides engaging instructional activities which I use between difficult or more routine paper work, and allows me to informally assess what she understands and what requires additional instruction.
The report indicates that her phonics skills are close to grade level. Phonemic awareness, sight word knowledge, and reading comprehension were at a low first grade level, indicating that she is right on target for the end of the school year! Her vocabulary level came out low for kindergarten, but I believe this was primarily due to the fact that they asked for the opposite of some words, and it didn't appear that she understood what that meant. I think she will pick up this concept quickly, and we can move on to other things.
We read a simple book together today primarily to assess her sight word knowledge. I quickly found, however, that she was eager and able to sound out harder words such as "hill" and "fast". With picture and context support, she was able to read the following words: the, is, a, on, nose, his, he, fast, is, up, hill, runs, too, off, into, forest, want, to, go, for, very, all, tree, and clock. This is wonderful!
During spontaneous conversation today she was noted to use the following incorrect past tense verbs - "choosed" and "goed".
Speech Teacher
Our girl continues to progress!!
When listening to a story presented auditory-only, Charlotte was able to recall numerous details; 8/11 achieving 73% accuracy. She was noted to say "pond" for creek, "chicken coop" for pen, and misnamed the name of the pet. Charlotte had good organization and sequencing skills. When retelling the story, she was noted to say "hold" for "held" and "find" for "found". Generalization of irregular past tense skills are still in need of attention.
“joy joy joy joy!!!!!”
What a year!!
We now have 8 days of school left. Swim team has already started and Charlotte made the youngest group, mini mites, which she loves. For now, Charlotte swims unaided. It must be so freeing, but I also know she misses out on a lot of conversations and doesn’t like that part. Her friends are great about making sure she can read their lips in the pool and understand the rules to whatever fun kid game they are playing.
We have Camp TALK in a few weeks, which is always a highlight of the summer for our whole family. My big kids volunteer and Charlotte hangs out with lots of other deaf and hard of hearing kids, which Emma gets to go to the sibling room to play.
I enjoy it because of the super informative parent programs that the hosting VCU Audiology Department brings in. This is where I first learned of Visual Phonics that helped clear up so much of Char’s articulation and we still use daily to tweak it, the LEAD-K legislature that is biased against communication options, met great parent resources and so much more.