This is too easy for you?

it is just about the end of the 4th week of school, and i'm slowly learning alot about my kids and myself - everything from sensory integration problems to their own little personality quirks, some which frequently remind me to pray for patience. and this is the one time i wish it would NOT go any faster. i'm ok with taking it slow. so, what did i learn today?

violence can actually inspire someone to read.

wait, what?

yes, it's true. many of my kids hyper focus on some such topic. for one kid it's naming all of the staff members after vegetables while for another it's arianna grande. Colonel Fighter is no such exception. rather than focus on wars that formed the US, he prefers to focus on the wars that involve AK-47, different covert operations, and espionage involving double spies. so how was i supposed to get this kid to work on our wonderful READ 180 program? it's a program that focus on building the vocab, spelling, and reading abilities of the students. he threw a fit when we showed him what was for today's lesson.

did i mention that he has willful defiance disorder? it's where you can't tell someone to do something, because they won't. i do admit, however, that this program probably IS too easy for him. at least the vocabulary and maybe spelling part.

anyways, he starts demanding a reason why he should do this, and why was it important, and that no one could make him do it and he'd rather read his own book. there wasn't any way he was gonna do this!



his helper replied, very firmly, something to the effect that it is school and you're here to learn and that this is what he needed to do. that almost made it worse. i was just not having it. so i looked Colonel Fighter right in the eye and said "you want to know why? because this will build your vocabulary. having a better vocabulary will make you sound smarter and people will have more respect for you. that's why. a person that can speak well and express themselves clearly will always be more impressive." which is very true. this made him pause, and then he said "just for that, i'll do this stupid thing. although i'd rather take a gun and shoot it and there'd be pieces of READ 180 all over the floor"

he lasted all about maybe 10 minutes. :) he was just about to get up and wander away when i roped him back in with the question "you like stories about war, correct?" it was his favorite subject! how could he not respond? well, i drew him further in when i told him that i had a story about a spy in the civil war. it was very short and would take him maybe 2 days maximum to read it. his reply? "that's insulting if you think it will take me two days to read it." to which i apologized sincerely for underestimating his reading abilities. he became even more interested when i told him that the spy was even more intriguing because it wasn't a guy: it was a girl. *GASP* how was that possible? oh, you want to read now?



so we got down to reading. we only read about 2.5 pages, but i managed to stretched them as long as i could by doing my favorite things: asking questions! i would stop and ask questions about odd phraseology or vocabulary and he did really well. at one point, he gave me multiple synonyms for the word "brave" i didn't know he could do that. but better than that, we were able to do a current event thing with this. we talked about other war/fight cases that have happened within the last 10 years, of course with osama bin laden being one such topic.

let's see how far i can take this topic! woot woot!