I have so enjoyed all I am learning this year in helping teach my youngest treasures, whom have learning challenges!
Interestingly both Hannah and Caleb have been diagnosed with Auditory Processing Disorder, but both of them display it in totally different fashion.
Caleb struggles with hearing and discriminating sounds, so he really struggles with spelling and hearing the words he is reading.
Hannah struggles with storing and reproducing sounds in the proper order.
Caleb has an amazing memory when it is in story or sentence form, but struggles with memorization of math facts and processes, grammar rules, and sequenced things like months or books of the Bible.
So he can memorize verses and speeches to amaze people, but still can not tell you the months of the year every time.
Hannah on the other hand has always struggled with memorizing of any sort.
In fact we were recommended not to try to have her memorize for quite a while.
This last year she memorized the whole 23rd Psalm and we were so very proud of her.
We used lots of hand motions and changed some words to help her.
And example would be, "in the presence of my enemies".
She was really struggling with this line till I figured out it was the word "presence" that was throwing her off.
Her idea of this was "presents", and it was not going to change from the concrete form of 'presents' to the non-concrete form of 'presence'.
So we changed it to "in front of my enemies", and off she went.
As she memorized, she slowly stopped the hand motions, but when she got stuck all I had to do was put my hands in the right place and it would clue in her memory.
All this to preface the above picture-
I did not want to cram verses into little minds with no understanding.
Caleb struggles with hearing and discriminating sounds, so he really struggles with spelling and hearing the words he is reading.
Hannah struggles with storing and reproducing sounds in the proper order.
Caleb has an amazing memory when it is in story or sentence form, but struggles with memorization of math facts and processes, grammar rules, and sequenced things like months or books of the Bible.
So he can memorize verses and speeches to amaze people, but still can not tell you the months of the year every time.
Hannah on the other hand has always struggled with memorizing of any sort.
In fact we were recommended not to try to have her memorize for quite a while.
This last year she memorized the whole 23rd Psalm and we were so very proud of her.
We used lots of hand motions and changed some words to help her.
And example would be, "in the presence of my enemies".
She was really struggling with this line till I figured out it was the word "presence" that was throwing her off.
Her idea of this was "presents", and it was not going to change from the concrete form of 'presents' to the non-concrete form of 'presence'.
So we changed it to "in front of my enemies", and off she went.
As she memorized, she slowly stopped the hand motions, but when she got stuck all I had to do was put my hands in the right place and it would clue in her memory.
All this to preface the above picture-
I did not want to cram verses into little minds with no understanding.
So with some help from teaching from Dianne Craft I came up with the above picture for Hannah.
With lots of color and pictures she was able to learn the verse and know its meaning at the same time.
I have also learned, at least at this point, we will only work on one verse a week with her.
She needs the constant reinforcement and when I try to add in a second verse for her Awana she mixes up the two and intertwines them and their meanings.
So I will be praising God for each verse and picture she memorizes at her own special pace---
Just the way God made her!
1 comment:
Love Dianne Craft!!!!! WE too have learned a lot from her and have seen many blessings :)
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