What's in a Name

What's in one student's name is --Too many vowels! One of our kindergartners was having a difficult time with the letters in his name. He spelled it so many different ways that at first we would go and recheck his school records for the spelling. We worked with the occupational therapist to think of some strategy to help him. Repeated writing was unsuccessful because his writing was so laborious that remembering the spelling became multitasking to the extreme. I tried to use individual letters and that was unsuccessful. We wanted to help him visualize the shape of his name. We made this puzzle grid for him. To begin with there were only 4 pieces (K,ea,g,an), when he had practiced and been given the verbal reminder that "g" was the 4th , we separated first the "an" piece and finally the "ea" piece. It was about two weeks of daily practice for about 3 to 5 minutes before he was consistently successful. Now we can move our efforts to writing his name with correct letter formation.