blank tiles

I have begun using the blank tiles.  This is helping my student visualize the elements of each word.  How it works is I dictate a word, have the student repeat the word, have the student tap the sounds of the word and then have her build the word using blank tiles.  The tiles are color coded for vowels, consonants, digraphs, welded sounds, and the suffix S.  So, my student needs to know how the word is constructed before she can build it with the blank tiles.  She then needs to spell the word out loud which reinforces the elements of the word.  This has had an unexpected benefit - she has been very slow to find the letters of each word after she taps it.  With the blank tiles, once she knows the structure of the word, it's much quicker to just pick up the correct blank tiles and lay them in the correct order.  It was so successful the first time I did it that we have decided to just use blank tiles for part 7 of the lesson. 

Friday I got the biggest compliment ever from my student!  We went a bit over in the afternoon so I apologized to her for taking up some of her recess.  She said that coming to work with me was like having an extra recess!  Imagine that!

This week we will be doing some review lessons because I don't want to start a new substep just before Christmas.  After the Christmas break my student will be ready to work on substep 2.5 (the last substep in step 2).  She is making awesome progress.