Fin’s Wilson Journey Part 3

Blog Series#3

Wilson Success Story

Kate and Fin completed Step 1, or the first Wilson Student Reader.  Fin passed the Step 1 assessment with flying colors, missing only one nonsense word, but orally reading the 14 other actual and nonsense words with 100% accuracy.   He also needed only 20 seconds to do so rather than the 35 seconds allowed.  He scored 97% accuracy on a Passage Fluency measure and answered all comprehension questions correctly.  He also scored 100% on his written dictation measure, showing that he could spell phonetically accurate words and sight words taught in Step 1.

Our second observation took place in November.  Fin and Kate had completed 14 lessons and were working on the first substep in Step 2.  One of the first things I noticed was that Kate did not have to repeat directions to Fin.  In our first observation, she would tell him to tap several times, although he knew he needed to tap words he missed.  However, during this session, he tapped and repeated sounds, words, phrases, and sentences without her prompting.  Fin’s parents had written a contract with him, which helped increase his initial buy-in for the Wilson tutorials.  I think the contract was a significant reason for Fin’s positive and dramatic change in attitude and behavior.

He could also read 15 nonsense words with 100% accuracy in 22 seconds.  Kate included many more nonsense words in their lessons, which paid off for Fin!  Again, the Wilson procedures were now more established, and they could complete the lesson efficiently.   

Fin’s dictation pages were noticeably neat and legible, contrasting the tiny, cramped handwriting and hard-to-read pages I saw during the first observation.  Take a look at his written dictation page after 9 Wilson lessons.  I noticed he was smiling and much more relaxed than our first observation. I was impressed with this young man's progress in only 15 lessons.  Kate’s mastery and dedication to the process were the keys to his success.