Peter is a distant relative of mine - his grandfather was my mother's cousin, and they were very close as children - so there is an element of commitment in this work that goes beyond the normal relationship between teacher and pupil. When we started, two years ago, Peter was starting his secondary education without having had a primary education at all. While his conversation seemed to indicate at least normal intelligence and interests for his age, his sensitivity to light had prevented him from learning to read, and his frustration had led him to a pattern of violent, destructive and anti-social behaviour that seemed destined for a quick and sad end, probably in jail. The prescription of tinted lenses allowed him to make an immediate improvement in his learning and behaviour at secondary school, but the teaching in his first school seemed to content itself with improved behaviour rather than really challenging him intellectually. Almost all of his written work was copying and gap filling, and he was not allowed to take a language.
His parents decided - on their own initiative rather than on my advice - to move him to another school where he was told he would be learning Spanish. After I'd spent the summer preparing him for Spanish, he was put into an Italian class instead, so we had to start Italian. Much of his written work was still copied, but the social and other activities of this school were a lot better, and Peter was much happier. Still, there were problems - for example, he was graded Level 4 in Italian, but only knew one or two words of the language and could not compose a sentence. Starting on tables after the first year, Peter now knows them, and is just a little hesitant on 7 and 8s. Looking back over the postings, this has been an issue for some time, but there is less hesitation now and Peter is quicker to correct his mistakes. He also knows why he is learning the tables. He did not learn them at primary school, and this experience shows the need to practise them over a long period.
Peter has been working with me on Italian, using Languages Online (free) and, this week, Forza 1 - the book only, as I've been unable to obtain the sound recording. Since the start of this term, we've been concentrating on remembering the differences between greetings - Ciao, buongiorno, buonasera, buonanotte, arrivederci. Buonanotte was very hard for Peter to get - he kept mixing it up with arrivederci and buonasera. Each time, I would go back through the chronology of the day, beginning with Buongiorno, then buonasera, ensuring that he understood both, and then Peter would get Buonanotte. On Friday, he got Buonanotte straight away, and understood the difference between the masculine buon and feminine buona. He also understood, from languages online, the difference between fiore and fiori. We moved to the book, with Peter reading after me, and he understood Questa è mi classe. He understood mi chiamo and si chiama, then me piace and mi dispiace. Working directly from the book was progress, and we made a list of verbs that Peter knew and could write without copying - it took a lot of work for Peter to understand and recall that i in Italian gave a sound a bit like double ee rather than i as in it. We will use these to make sentences - so far we have ho, so, sono, e, mi piace, mi dispiace. Peter got a merit for his Italian in school this week, and his father says he has been practising 15 to 20 minutes a night independently. We have made an important breakthrough in Peter's understanding and use of memory and he is in a position to move towards communicating in Italian. This work is, once again, quite inconsistent with a diagnosis of Asberger's.
Finally an update on reading. My analysis, which I've shared with Peter, is that he is an intelligent boy who had one problem - light sensitivity - that led to a great deal of frustration and misery for him and everyone connected with him. Our goal had always been for him to catch up by the end of Year 9, and I've bought copies of CGP's KS3 complete revision and Practice in English, maths and science, to make sure we don't miss anything. These books are not easy to read, and we began this week by working through page 1 of the science book, on organisms. We had to work on quite a lot of unfamiliar vocabulary here, including words like chloroplasts, chlorphyll, vacuole and nucleus, as well as rigid, which caused Peter problems. As always, I ensured that Peter read and understood every word on the page. On Saturday morning, Peter read the whole page to me with good understanding and only one hesitation on vacuole. This is real progress. Whether or not we get to Level 5 by the summer, we'll certainly give it a good shot. And behaviour problems are a thing of the past.