Subject-Verb Agreement

[imagine.more]

Anyone know of any resources to help teach subject-verb agreement? Even after going over this topic continuously DD is seriously unable to understand the problem with saying things like "The bad kid haven't been at camp." A few simple worksheets isn't going to cut it, she needs some sort of explicit hard-and-fast teaching and continual review. 

[kbutton]

Maybe this is a dumb question. I have no experience with this particular issue, but does she hear the "s" at the end of words? If not, have you explicitly said that the s isn't silent at the end of these sorts of words (and that it will sound like z)?

 

Does she understand how to form a plural noun and plural verb separately before putting them in sentences together? If not, I might have her practice those skills and then have her play games/sort words into lists of singular and plural words before putting them together. I would probably make up games or activities that help her compose correct singular/plural pairs herself, starting with the nouns and verbs separately (and with help if necessary) rather than giving her "choose the correct form" exercises. I think that seeing both the incorrect and correct choices together in print could reinforce incorrect patterns for kids who are really struggling with it, causing them to guess (which is why I am pretty biased against a lot of multiple choice questions anyway). Maybe her mental model of ending sounds/how to form plurals has been formed inconsistently before you started working with her so that the printed version seems arbitrary to her. She might need a chart with prompts on how to identify or form those plurals for a while, especially for plurals that aren't straight add "s" sorts of words (fox/foxes, etc.).

 

I don't really know what it looks like to teach a hearing impaired child these sorts of things, but I assume that she has some gaps where previous teachers made incorrect assumptions about what she was understanding and not understanding. My kids' own issues bias me towards making explicit connections even when I tend to think they already know something--it's amazing what tiny but important details they are missing at times.

 

A quick search came up with this book: http://successforkidswithhearingloss.com/grammar-code

 

I hope someone with some experience chimes in. 

[imagine.more]

She can hear the "s" though she sometimes skips it when saying it out of laziness (s and z sounds are hard for hearing impaired kiddos). But 90% of the time she can do the plural sounds accurately. Her hearing is like 85% accurate with hearing aids so she's not like a completely deaf child which makes things a bit easier. And yes, she was definitely encouraged to make guesses without understanding for years in public school, and often the teachers just said "oh, she's deaf, it's great that at least she can do something!" and reported her progress as "great" even though she was failing to meet 2nd grade standards in 5th grade and had stalled out in most subjects.

 

Anyway, back to subject-verb agreement :) As in the example above she does it even when it's not an "s" at the end of the word. Like she might say "Ben and Peter has gone to play." or in Barton lessons make a sentence like "Mr. Smith are mad." She'll read it correctly so I praise her :) but then I'll talk about why Mr. Smith is singular and are is plural and how they don't match and all that stuff. She'll nod and fix it, then make the exact same mistake next time. So while it's definitely a language issue I don't think in these cases it's an issue of her not hearing the words or sounds correctly. 

[kbutton]

I hope you get more suggestions. Ingrained habits are very hard.

 

It's good that you can rule out hearing as contributing directly in this case. I wasn't sure if she had up-to-date hearing aids before she came to your family, and I also wasn't sure if there were certain sounds that she just couldn't hear (I know hearing loss varies). 

[PeterPan]

This is something you could choose to outsource to speech therapy.  Explaining things as singular/plural really is counterintuitive (since they aren't), and the verb tenses get very complicated.  My guess is Super Duper has materials for this.  I used stuff with an ESL student that would work.  Really though, what I would do is give her some simple guidance sentences, one in each conjugation, so she can chant through them daily.  That's a really rough road to try to change someone's grammar after a lot of years.  If you have the guide sentences to chant, then when she makes an error you can go Oh, let's chant! and go through the guides (ALL of them) and give her a Skittles, kwim?  Like not punishment but sort of reverse pouring in to see if eventually it will pile up and tip over to a new pattern.

 

I'll repeat though, english verbs are incredibly complex.  I wouldn't expect miracles.  Personally, I'd be satisfied with present and simple past, kwim?  The rest would just be bonus if they come.  I'm not saying low standards, but just admitting they are complex and that native speakers even without hearing problems make errors.

 

He kisses the dog every day.

He kissed the dog yesterday.

He will kiss the dog tomorrow.

He will kiss the dog every day.

He will have kissed the dog three times by 5 o'clock.

and so on...

 

You'll need chants for each pronoun (I, you, he/she/it, we, y'all, they).  It may take a while to build up to that, and that's ok too.  Just have some fun with it and see what you can make happen, rewarding her for participation and effort.

[imagine.more]

Yes i'd love to see her use all verb forms accurately but right now my focus is truly just singular vs plural as a starting point. Unfortunately her speech therapists are no good. They will only do 30 min a week though insurance approved more, and they play go fish and ask her to name attributes of bees and practice st blends... I've said numerous times it's her vocabulary and sentence structure i'm concerned about, not articulation, but they don't work on those. My husband is unemployed so we're moving and i told him we have to move to a city with better services for Ana. It's ridiculous here.

 

Elizabeth, i'll have to look into that Super Duper thing you mentioned, i assume it's a curriculum provider?

[Princess Ariel]

I remember my dd having problems with that as well.  She still does occasionally.  I found this game online, hope it's okay to post link:

 

http://gotkidsgames.com/sv/sv.html

 

They also say they have worksheets to purchase for $1.00 to reinforce it.

[geodob]

Though perhaps I could ask if she could hear the 's' sound before she got hearing aids?

With 's' being a high pitched sound, that is most often effected by hearing impairment.

 

 

[Mom22ns]

Yes i'd love to see her use all verb forms accurately but right now my focus is truly just singular vs plural as a starting point. Unfortunately her speech therapists are no good. They will only do 30 min a week though insurance approved more, and they play go fish and ask her to name attributes of bees and practice st blends... I've said numerous times it's her vocabulary and sentence structure i'm concerned about, not articulation, but they don't work on those. My husband is unemployed so we're moving and i told him we have to move to a city with better services for Ana. It's ridiculous here.

 

I'm not going to be helpful, but I'll commiserate. I dealt with multiple speech therapists and all but one were just as you describe. So frustrating.

 

I do think noun verb agreement is learned by hearing, not by a rule. Since she didn't learn it by hearing and now has bad habits, I'm sure it will be very difficult to fix. I'm sorry I don't know a resource that would give you more practice.