My second session with P.J. was different in that he was visibly more tired than during my first session. School must have kept him busy. I asked him what was the very, very, best, greatest thing he did that day. His response, "Playing on the playground!" The answer boosted his energy temporarily. I took the opportunity to check his playground equipment vocabulary. (What is the thing you climb on called? Using the motion of sliding down, and saying "whoosh," I asked what he calls the thing you go swoosh on...etc. He knew the names of the different pieces of equipment.
P.J. and I re-read a story from Highlight magazine that he liked. His mother believed there were words he didn't know in the story that he needed to know. When I saw words I suspected were new to him, I asked him to tell me their meaning. If they were receptive vocabulary words (magpie, roadrunner, sagebrush), I told him their meaning and some fun info about them. When the words were productive vocabulary, we spent more time, made connections, and practiced them. "Huge," describing the rabbit in the story's ears, was compared to Rudolph's tiny antlers and the other reindeer's huge antlers from the previous session's story. "Munch" was acted out. . . etc.
I introduced him to the phrase "changing gears" as we went from the story to learning names of occupations using a picture book. We talked about riding bikes and changing from an easy to a hard gear. Then we talked about changing from the story to learning about the names of occupations.
We had some struggles with the occupation names. Most were new words for him. He knows them in Korean (his primary language at home), but not in English. After several times through the pictures and words, I told him a story I made up about himself. "One day your dad looked over at you and said, 'P.J., where are your eyes? Your hair is so long I cannot see them. You need a haircut." (Then I asked, "Who cuts men's hair?" - Barber.) Continuing the story, "After the barber cut your hair, you rode in the car with your dad to go home. Suddenly, you heard a "kuthud, kuthud." ("Who can fix your car?" - Mechanic.) We did this until we covered the career names.
Focus was the biggest challenge because he was tired. The names of careers did not seem to stick. I gave prompts, such as first leaving the words uncovered, and then covering them but giving the sound of the first letter and vowel. Any other ideas on how to make big occupation names (or vocab words) stick, like pharmacist and sanitation worker?
Greg
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