Where is the dog?

2008, November 25, Tuesday 

We sat down to have a study session (Ivan and I), this time it was English Comprehension. After a few sessions of break and work, we had reached the last page of the assessment book. It was the last hurdle for the day. Unfortunately, none of us expected it to take that long.

First, I had to erase all the answers that he had written, as they were all wrong. I got him to read the passage again (so slowly). Then I read it over again to help him reinforce it. After which, we read the question again, slowly.

Question: Where is the cat?

He simply could not comprehend the passage as it was not so straight forward. As there was a picture attached I circled the cat and pointed to it with an arrow. I then asked him, "Where is the cat?" 

He repeated my question. I modified the question. 

 Is the cat in the tree or on the ground?

He paused awhile then answered me. "In the tree". 

I was glad with his answer, as he showed me that he understood. (hurray). 

Normally, he would repeat the last choice you gave him, as the answer to everything. The fact that I gave the correct answer as the first choice and the wrong answer as the second choice was to get him to think. Thankfully, he did that. (thank you God)

That went fine, but it was only the beginning. The second question, really got me to hit the roof.
 

Question: Where is the dog?

Answer: It stood below the tree (as per passage)

He was lost again. We read through the passage again. 

Then I read through the passage. 

Then we read the question again. 

He paused, as if he was in deep thought, after a while he smiled and answered, "Woof, woof." 

Oh no.... I realized just then that he had misunderstood the question and was already beginning to switch off mentally.

Ivan is a very visual child, unfortunately that was not helping in this situation. The picture of the dog was drawn in such a way that it had three strokes around the mouth, (to give you the idea that the dog was barking). That apparently, was the whole distraction. Ivan refused to see the rest of the picture, he was very contented with the lines that illustrated the bark.

On one hand I should be glad that he understood the abstract illustration of the dog barking, but on the other he was fixated with that thought. I tired re-reading the passage again, but he still gave me "Woof, woof" for the answer. When I stricken my tone to get him to focus, he got angry. He let out a scream and with eyes filled with tears he said "woof, woof". I felt horrible. Was I pushing him too much? Am I being unreasonable? But I just knew there was a way to get through to him. What was it?

I took a deep breathe and smiled as I composed myself. Assured him, that the reward was at hand if we could get over this last page. This time I read through the passage and exaggerated the annotations to highlight the answer. He managed to pick it out. I was so happy with his effort. As he began to write the answer he forgot where the answer was in the passage. Quickly, I grabbed a highlighter and highlighted the sentence as we read through together. SUCCESS!

I thanked God that we had overcome the hurdle together. The other two questions were not that hard and he managed to finish the book after all. As I sat down and thought over the new found victory, I felt my heart skip a beat as I looked ahead and thought of all the new syllabus that will come next year. How was I going to do it? Picking up the pieces, of my broken heart, I told myself that I was going to take it a day at a time. Meanwhile, I would enjoy this little boy that God has given me.

bittersweetz