I Win!

I have a fourth grade student with a learning disability that I see for 1 hour and 45 minutes every day. She LOVES competition! And because it is such a huge motivator for her, I try to make everything into a game... everything. We've been working on our diphthongs for a while now (vowel combinations such as oi, oo, au). For each diphthong set, I've made picture cards and word cards. We play lots and lots of games with these cards: Go Fish!, Memory, BOO, and Old Maid. Usually, I try to rig it so that she wins. Every once in awhile, I might win by accident, but then she likes to call for a re-match...

It wasn't until recently that we had started using the cards to play Old Maid. It's still easy to let her win this game, but for some odd reason, I can't bring myself to lose. There's just something about it that brings out the FIERCE COMPETITOR you all know me to be (haha). Even though I can see her get frustrated and stumped every time she loses, I can't help trying to win! Even when my head says "let her win this round", my heart says "NEVER!".

But regardless of who wins or loses, her prize is that she's becoming a better reader. And that makes both of us happy :)

5 comments:

Max said...

You're a diphthong.

Anonymous said...

Diphthong. Isn't that a european with a huge bottom and has to wear two thongs? Jabron.

Anonymous said...

Dippity Doo Da

Anonymous said...

That's great, Sarah! I'm extremely NON-competitive, but I've learned to use students' generally HIGH level of competitiveness in our lessons.

Anonymous said...

We had that same issue with your husband and gaming...

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