one of those little breakthroughs

I’ve been tutoring a seven-year-old in Grade 2 since August, twice a week, and recently added twenty minutes a session with her six-year-old sister. I’ve been teaching her French as a second language for a 50% immersion class, reading skills, and handwriting. This is one of those kids who had a terrible directionality problem to start, but wih steady coaching in both print and cursive it’s over 90% straightened out.

So in January her parents asked me to add twenty minutes a session with math, which was her next really mixed up area.
Well, she could add and subtract very small numbers on her fingers, could read and write numbers up to 99, and that was about it. She had no clue about the base ten system, why things worked that way, sums over 6 or addends over 4 she guessed wildly, and she counted pretty inaccurately. She also avoided doing math, dawdled, and stared into space.

We’ve been sitting down with a commercial math workbook for exercises, and counting and grouping pennies. Lots and lots and lots of pennies. Lots and lots and lots of counting. We’ve worked and worked on basic addition facts and subtraction facts and on groups of tens, mostly in the teens. Over the past month she has become *much* more accurate in simple addition and subtraction, she has started to do a little “carrying” successfully, and she counts better.

Today she reminded me to start with math!!

I think we are on a roll and she is going to be within sight of grade level by the end of the year.

All that dull advice I keep handing out about starting slow and working bit by bit — you know, it’s working.