My Kindergarten student is struggling with the “empty dots” as he reads the braille. For instance, he will read ‘k’ as a ‘b’ as he says it out loud “1, 2”. I have him reading this out loud so I can assist him as he reads and can hear his logic as to why he’s reading the letters the way he is.
To make this task more fun, I came up with the “Dot not home because…” He enjoys this and laughs. He is improving his reading of the letters now that we’ve started this. This is what it sounds like:
(the letter is ‘o’)
Student: dot 1, dot 2
Me: Dot 2 is not home because he went to the grocery store to buy bacon
Student: dot 1, dot 3, dot 4
Me: Dot 4 is not home because he went to get his car fixed
Student: dot 1, dot 3, dot 5 is letter ‘o’
Sometimes he’ll say something silly such as “the pig said oh no” or will do the letter sound. To assist with his stamina, after 6-8 letters he takes a 2-3 minute break doing an activity of his choice.
As a side note, he can braille all the lower case letters of the alphabet and sings the braille alphabet song. Reading the letters is his only problem at the moment.
