I met with 9-year-old Jason and his father at an ice cream parlor. I have found it difficult to teach him because he doesn't readily speak a lot, and because the English that he reveals seems nearly perfect. In order to get him to come out of himself a bit, I asked him to tell me two stories that I would type into my laptop, a fictional story and a non-fiction story. This was a relatively useful exercise.
The true story was about his experiences playing on a soccer team. I noticed right away that I would take Jason's halting, incomplete sentences, and clean and complete them for him in the typed version. This was both good and bad. I would reflect back to Jason a cleaner version of what he had said, thus modeling better speech. However, I did not write down the dirty versions, so we did not get a chance to go over the mistakes. I believe that overall I took the better tack by leaving the activity uncomplicated. I did manage both to get him to talk and tell a story, as well as to model improved versions of what he said. I did not want to discourage him from opening up.
Jason told me three very short fictional stories, one about ninjas and snakes, another about an ant that ate a dragon, and the last about Jason's ideas surrounding male-female relationships centered around a wedding. He shared something he found amusing, that the ring was baked into a cake that the girl would discover. We looked at some vocabulary related to the third story: banquet, thorn, to be pricked, aisle, usher, and organ.
We then looked at pictures related to weddings, and what common themes are found in these images (e.g., rings, flowers, cake, kissing, etc.).
Jason revealed some of the things that bring him pleasure: playing with toys, watching movies on the computer, video games, watching TV, and playing with water. Although he likes water, he can't swim very well. This information will add to the store of information that will enable me to engage Jason in the future.
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