“I can spell 100 words”, said Kareem proudly. Spelling has
become his latest game. Thankfully we passed the stage of persuading Kareem to
spell “is”, “and” when he would rather watch TV or play with iPad. Actually, he
has been learning a lot through special TV programmes (the amazing Mr. Tumble)
and the iPad but that is for another blog.
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| Kareem used to go to this sport of the kitchen floor and play games on his IPad |
Of course, learning to spell has taken a lot of time and
efforts from the school, the family and from Kareem himself. I remember in
2015, we used little coloured words to get him to visually recognise common
words. I played the words with him almost every day for long time. We had a big
jar of various words and we would put a limited number of common words in a
smaller jar and use it day after day. Gradually we would add more words to the
small jar until one day we were using all the words from the big jar.
Recently, Kareem’ mum invented a way of making writing and
spelling visual. She would draw a little table for the letters of a particular word
then he writes the letters in the squares. Afterwards, he would write it down the
whole word. Somehow, he liked this way of learning. Clearly visual learning is
his thing.
For example:
After days and days of doing few simple words -almost- every
evening, he started to decide the words, make the table but not use it for
writing! Instead he would write the word first then do a table but the cells
did not correspond to the number of letters!
Of course, it was not easy to get him to sit down and do
“homework”. We use different method like: what do you want to do first?
Invariably it is “watch Pippa Pig”. Then the negotiation starts on which
homework first-usually after one Pippa Pig.
He decides between English, maths, science, spelling. We do not name
these subjects as he now knows them. He also decides whether the work is from
books, sheets, computer.
With the writing, Kareem would spell and thus the game
started. Almost every day he would verbally spell few words until he reached a
hundred words.
Yesterday Kareem was proud to tell his aunt the words he was
able to spell. He would say: “I can spell….” and then he spelt the word correctly.
Then his aunt would ask him to spell other words. At last, she asked him to
spell: “cat”. He said: ta, aa, c. We must have looked baffled. He looked at us
and said: “spell back”. Then he liked the new game and started to spell
backwards other words: dog, quarter, mummy, dad, Kareem.
Today with friends he spelt backwards lots of the words he
knows: school, children, where, when, what, book,…
I cannot describe the happiness of all the family especially
his mother with his spelling “forwards”. Now that with Kareem spelling so many
words “backwards” we are in ecstasy!
Tom Cosford is Kareem’s teacher at St. Nicholas state school in Oxford.
Tom is simply amazing. He is highly professional, patient and understanding. However,
you may assess a teacher, I am sure Tom will score the highest! He understands Kareem’s character and needs
and knows how to deal with him in his best and worst modes and behaviours.
Tom and St Nicolas school are a great example of how to
integrate children with special needs in school learning and activities so that
they can achieve the maximum of their potential. I hope that other children are in schools with great staff like St. Nicolas: the headmistress, the teachers, the teaching assistants, and all the team.
