W's Monologue

Monday evening W started taking acting classes with a local organization. He's signed up for a beginners class for children ages 8 - 12 that will meet once a week from now until the end of February. We don't know anyone else with this group and have never been involved in theater so this will be quite an adventure for all of us.

He really enjoyed his first class and was sent home with a short monologue from Alice in Wonderland, to work on this week. The note he brought home with it stated that he need not memorize it but instead just read it over several times this week. The note also said they'd be working on their monologues next week so because he was not asked to memorize it I'm assuming he'll be reading it in front of the class.

I've written before about W's vision problems and how they relate to his reading. He is currently reading Frog and Toad books with no problem but when I asked him to underline the words he wasn't sure about in this monologue, it was about half of them.

So...I made flashcards for all of the underlined words and we'll be working on them a lot this week. I'm hesitant to have him read the entire monologue to me more than 5 or 6 times this week though because I know he will just memorize it and maybe still not know the words. That's how he has learned to compensate for his vision issues.

Anyway, I hoping this will give W an even more compelling reason to work hard and make progress. He's done such a good job with his vision therapy but sometimes it seems like he doesn't really care about making progress with his reading. I'm hoping now he will at least for this class.