We are 17 sessions into our 20! Both students, brother & sister, are doing very well. I always find it amazing (even in my own household) how different two children can be. The brother, we'll call him Mark, is doing wonderful with his lessons, but has a very difficult time focusing for long periods of time, and has very little interest in anything related to schoolwork. He does much better on our Saturday lessons when he has not had a full day of school and homework. His sister, let's call her Marie, could work for hours at a time. Mark is struggling more with basic reading and decoding, where Marie is having some difficulty in that area, but is having more difficulty with comprehension and recall.
So, with Mark we are working with the Beacon Literacy Development Remedial Reading Program as it is traditionally set up and have not deviated from it's methods and procedures. He seems to be doing very well with this. We spend about 30 minutes per session. I try not to let lessons run longer than that, as he begins to lose focus. Beacon lessons, typically do not last longer than anyway, but with students like Mark, you sometimes get to stop in the middle of session and "chat" about other things :). I am very anxious to test him and see what gains he is making.
I started Marie with Beacon lessons, but doubled them up. We worked on those for about 10 sessions, give or take, and now we are using the Beacon methods with other materials. At the moment, we are Brigance Building Skills. I am quite surprised, at grade 6, at how unfamiliar Marie seems to be with answering basic comprehension and vocabulary questions. We are spending a great deal of time of that.
We will see how things go! I will be testing both students in about two weeks and then we will determine if we need to continue with our sessions.
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