My student in Kenya, Africa (Part 1)

On the 5.7.2020 I received a message on Facebook Messenger from a lady in Kenya, Africa which said the following:

Dear Luqman, I have been following your blogs and you seem to understand these children and able to help them. I have a 11 year old who is showing the signs of shut down in her writing. I would appreciate if you can help through Zoom. Kind Regards.

I responded immediately as follows:

I don’t have Zoom. If we can do it through WhatsApp I will try and help.

We then exchanged email addresses. 

She told me that the teachers have classified her daughter as dyslexic.

I gave a passage via email for her daughter to read and record the reading for me which she did.

From the reading, I found that she missed words and also added words that were not in the passage.

I then asked the mother to give her daughter dictation and asked her to write down the Dolch words. There were more than 30 mistakes.

I also asked the mother to give her dictation on the passage I had given her. 

From the reading and the spelling test, it was obvious that she was a shut-down kid. I immediately knew that this girl was an intelligent girl who had disengaged due to confusion.

The mother was very cooperative and did everything I suggested. We emailed or WhatsApp messaged almost every day. She gave me feedback each day.

In less than 2 weeks this girl’s self-confidence has escalated and her self-esteem has been restored. 

When the mother was asked to record her daughter pronouncing the phonemes represented by letters the daughter broke down and cried by the time she reached the letter ‘g’. 

I asked her mother to teach her the proper pronunciation of the phonemes.

Here is a video of the girl reading the sounds represented by the letters. Only one or two consonants are pronounced with a slight extraneous sound. I have mentioned that to the mother.