Writing class

Chance's writing class is broken up into 3 groups: One group reads a book such as "Tom Sawyer", one is a poetry group where the kids read, write and analyze poetry and to be honest, I am not sure what the third group does.

Chance is in the poetry group. I noticed last week that he kept asking me what words meant as he did his homework and then it dawned on me that it was taking quite a while for Chance to get his homework done which is not characteristic of him.

Some of the poetry used words in ways that no one would ever use in normal conversations. Or writing for that matter.

Other poems had words that were not used often or old fashioned.

It occurred to me that Chance may be struggling with the vocabulary of these poems and when I asked him if he had to figure out what many of the words meant before he finished the assignment he said yes.

Then the last day of school before Thanksgiving break, when I thought all of his homework was done, Chance informed me that he had not gotten two poems finished for his poetry unit which was due that day.

Chance is very conscientious about getting his homework done on time and when I asked him why he did not have the two poems ready to turn in, he told me that he had done all of the others, these were the last two and he had done his best.

I asked him if the words in the poems made it hard for him to finish getting them done and he told me yes.

So I went in and talked to the teacher. I told her that some of the vocabulary made it hard for Chance to get through all of the assignments as he had to figure out what so many of the words meant before he could do the assignments and asked if I could work with Chance over the Thanksgiving break and get the last two poems done. She was very understanding and said that would be alright. I want Chance to do all that he is capable of and rarely do I feel that he needs special time lines to turn in assignments, but when I realized just how much the vocabulary was affecting his ability to get the work done, I felt it was only fair to allow him more time to complete the assignment. Chance is pulled out of the last bit of writing for speech once a week as well, so sometimes he misses what the teacher explains during that time.

Now the night before school starts back up again, Chance is done with his last two poems. We had a discussion as to what "analyze this poem meant" and what logical and nonsensical meant as he was supposed to pick out examples of nonsensical and logical verses from a poem they had done in class.

Just little things that amount to a lot when you are trying to get through a poem. Chance actually did most of the assignments with out my help. Most of the difficult vocabulary was in the assignments that he already turned in before the break and once we sat down and talked about what certain words meant so he understood what he was expected to do he was fine.

The last assignment involved Chance writing a poem about some of his ancestors so we hauled out the book I have filled with stories of some of our ancestors. Chance read through them and then decided to write about his great great grandma using activities she did in nature as his theme. He talked about how she loved to play outside as a girl and picked giant mushrooms to sell during the great depression from fields by her house. It was quite a good poem and I think Chance got to know his great great grandmother a little better as well.

Vocabulary will be something that I think we need to stay attuned to for the rest of Chance's school career. Chance is smart and catches on very fast, but all it takes is missing what a few words mean to blow your ability to understand what is being talked about.

As Chance gets older, the vocabulary will get more intense. I know he can do it. We just have to make sure that he gets the vocabulary ground work laid so he doesn't get frustrated.

The audiologist Carol Flexer talked about the importance of vocabulary and deaf kids when she came and gave a conference last spring. She actually said that if a deaf or hard of hearing child starts to struggle in a subject, especially one that has not been a problem before, to not assume that it was the child, but to look at the vocabulary and see if that is the problem.