Days 37 through 40

A big chunk of time has gone by since my last blog, but Zack was out sick some this week. I got to work one-on-one with him on Friday for a while and then did his report card with his lead vision teacher, so I have lots to report on. :)
On Friday, I gave Zack the math test I've been giving to the other students since school started. It's a simple counting test that involves counting 32 cubes, counting out a given quantity, adding and taking away from a group of cubes and asking questions about adding or taking away cubes. He did fine on the counting piece (he started counting by 5s when he hit 25, but the teachers assured me this was him "performing" for me and that he regularly counts to 40 correctly for them), but he struggled on counting out a particular quantity. I discussed it with the vision teacher, and we think that he needs a container to put the cubes into so that he can touch the ones he's counted. He would just keep counting when I asked him to give me a pile of 18 or 12 or 7, never noticing when he reached the number. He was putting the cubes in a deep tray, though, and I think this was impacting his idea of conservation of number. Because he wasn't able to feel the cubes he had counted, he was performing a rote counting task rather than recognizing when he had reached a given quantity. Hmm. . .that may not make sense to anyone but me! It seemed foreign to him to create a quantity, so we're going to try it again with a shallow bowl for him to put the cubes in so the task seems more concrete.
His report card was a little challenging, but I think his vision teacher and I have the kinks all worked out. It was frustrating to grade him on tasks designed for seeing children (like letter recognition or sight word recognition) because he is at a different place in his reading instruction. Apparently braille is much more challenging to learn than visual letters? That may be another chapter I want to read quickly so I can have a better grasp of why that is. Although I don't work with him during reading time at all, it would be nice to understand what she is talking about. Remembering to give all of the testing materials to the vision team has been challenging. . .I can hardly keep up with the testing I have to do! We survived, though, and all of Zack's testing is done and his report card is complete. One day at a time, right?