Noah and Formerly Known as Botty

Just before Mr. Victor and the Good Doctor walked out the door for the bus, Victor yelled back at me, "This would be a good time to write me another Noah and BB-8 story." I smiled. Partly because he is always needing to be in control. Partly for the grown-up way in which he attempted to prioritize my day. Mostly because he wants me to write a story so he can read it.

Like a good mom-who-used-to-be-a-teacher, I try to have him read everyday.

The problem is that his Braille skills are somewhere between kindergarten and first grade (through no fault of his teacher - it is what it is). His cognitive skills are several grade levels above that and his vocabulary is closer to middle school.

Reading books with limited vocabulary and no plot has been less than motivational for him. As in, zero motivation. It's like pulling teeth. Literally since not only is he visually impaired he's also sensory challenged. Pulling his teeth out is like the proverbial pulling of teeth. If the idiom fits, you wear it.

So I put on my teacher hat, the one with the special education degree, and tried to think outside the box. What would motivate this unique, visually impaired, sensory challenged, and need-to-be-in-control child to read?

Robots, of course. And Star Wars. And stories with at least some kind of plot and conflict.

The first story was about Noah (Mr. Victor's middle name) and his robot which I named Botty.

Mr. Control read the story and told me the robot's name was stupid (subtlety is not his middle name). He also told me what the name needed to be. Actually, he gave me three choices - all characters on Star Wars, of course. With my apologies to the copyrighters at Star Wars, by Story #3, Botty had a new name (one beginning with the same letter as his old name but since I don't have enough money for copyright infringement fines, we'll leave the actual name up to your imagination).

Then he insisted that Noah needed another robot, and again strongly advised me on the naming of said robot.

Just a few stories in I could already see improvements in interest, fluency, use of context clues, and his desire to phonetically sound out an unknown word.

20 stories in and we're still going strong!