New strides towards higher learning are taking place with my dear Rosebud! She is now being introduced to advanced first grade English. Yes, I know she is 9 1/2 and her grade card says she is in 3rd grade but thankfully her teachers work within HER abilities – not a pre-defined path of education.
After reading the Bible’s account of the Easter story from Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24 and John 20, she was given this writing exercise. The instructions were to “Draw and Write”, and she was given a word box with these words to help her create a story: Easter, rose, angels, Peter, Jesus, stone, and Mary.
The First Easter
the rose angels
the Easter hit the stone
I Mary Jeus
I give Peter a rose
So it’s not Maya Angelou… that’s ok by me! We’re talking about a child whose only word was “MA!” for years, who had ten barely understandable words when she was 3, who had no clue what you were talking about when you said “what is this?” when pointing to an apple, and said her first sentence just over 4 years ago (“I go outside play green grass?”).
Here she is reading me this same story (apparently she can’t read her own writing!)
On the other side of this paper was the sentence writing activity: “Write a sentence using spelling words”.
The word box contained the words “snail, stop, street” and she wrote: “I see a snail”
For the words “Snake, slip, snow” she wrote: “I paly the snow” (I play in the snow).
“stove, smoke, smell” she wrote: “I smell smoke”
“sky, speak, skip” she wrote: “I speak mom” (I speak to mom).
“Easter, after” she wrote: “I live Easter” (I like Easter).
Then we move on to spelling. I was always the kid in class that got 100% on every spelling test without studying. It was as easy as breathing to spell all those words in the many books I’d read. Even now, if you ask me to spell some weird long word I’ve never heard before there is a 90% chance I’d spell it correctly. But I digress – we’re talking about Rosebud here, the one who says “buh fly” instead of butterfly. Who can not say school – it’s always sool. Skunk is snuk. Proverbs is problems. Elligator? Yes, that would be the elevator. So I can only imagine how difficult it would be for her to memorize how to spell butterfly. Or skunk. Or elevator. This was her latest spelling test:
boy
toy
joy
boil
jon (join)
noise
binday (birthday)
buttfly (butterfly)
airport
mialman (mailman)
football
rionbow (rainbow)
thank
four
And a word of praise here for her school: even though technically she got a 64% on this test, they still work one on one with her to help encourage her and help her do better next time. The use of the English language is not her strongest area, so they will keep working with her at her level.
