Bikram, as usual. I'm still on the floor. On Wednesday, I noticed a shift in my lower back while doing the opening breathing exercise. Yesterday and today, I shifted my right hip to the left more. When I got home and checked in the mirror, I could see that my spine was straight. Wow! Am I really going to accomplish this?
On the way home, I stopped off at Kaiser to get my flu shot. After signing in at the front desk, I went to the designated waiting area. A woman was sitting at a desk behind a screen. I figured she was the one dispensing the shots. While I had been told there was no waiting, and she had no other clients back there, I couldn't figure out why she hadn't called me. I finally asked her if she knew where I was supposed to get my shot. I told her someone told me there was no waiting. Her computer hadn't refreshed. Ah, I think she was doing something else and not paying attention, but she did apologize—the liquid hurt going into the arm. I was good; I didn't cry, and she gave me a lollipop for being so brave.
As I was driving home, I encountered a rainstorm on my way up the mountain. When I got home, I checked how the system I set up to redirect the drain pipe flow was doing. It looked like it directed the water away from the house. I didn't understand how one area was washed clean of pebbles from the water's flow. I planned to ask Yvette.
I showered, did MELT for my hands and feet, and sat down and played FreeCell. Then, I went into the library and happily alphabetized a few more shelves. I found three more books. Fantastic!
I went to school. Today, I did the phonemic analysis audio file with D after he had read just the letters in the words in sequence in the story about the Quiet Queen. He seemed to be doing much better, although he had trouble remembering the names of some of the letters, like u, w, and y. Naming letters in and of itself is not of great significance, but it suggests a recall problem. He did fantastic work self-correcting. I've decided to give him these exercises primarily for the next two weeks and see what happens. I have been very encouraged by the results with E and his brother K.
The third-grade girl who read so nicely yesterday wasn't quite as cooperative today, but still not as bad as she has been in the past. When I asked her to read the letters to me, her first response was, 'Easy!" which it was. But as you go on, the mind feels like there's a log jam in there. That's what happens when these kids read, too. They can start okay and then fade, and no one knows why. Something must go on in the brain. I think the simple task of letter naming in sequence in continuous text exposes the problem and works as a cure with repeated practice. She also listened to some of the audio file.
I am working with one boy in the other third-grade class. This teacher has been asking me to work with this one girl for several days. I finally agreed. R has only managed to remember a few sight words and has not progressed. I love cases like that! They're puzzles for me to solve.
The sight word books the teacher gave me to work with were based on repetitive exposure to the same words. If a child doesn't know how to recall, seeing words over and over won't do a whole lot of good. I used the text from The Quiet Queen, which she could never read alone. I pointed to sight words as they came up. She could identify the, she, and and. But not much more. She was stuck on there, was and here. I started with there because it was the first word we came across that she couldn't identify.
She could not tell me where she experienced recall in her brain. I showed her the word there and then drew the letters on her forehead to appear correctly for her, using the eraser side of a pencil. She was supposed to see them printed on the inside of her forehead. Good news! She did not look up as if she wanted to see the letters with her eyes inside her forehead. Yeah, I have had kids who have done that.
At first, she could only remember the word's first three letters. After a few tries, she recalled all five letters in the word there in the correct order and 'read' them off backward from the image in her brain.
When I checked her brain's auditory working memory center, she used the correct part. I twisted some hair, pushed her nose (the save button), ran my finger over her left ear, and drew a spiral, saying, "Down the hippocampal formation into long-term memory." We worked on two other words. In the end, she could recall all three words when she saw them. Using different words as distractors, she could remember the words correctly. It was good progress.
I had her do some letter naming. She did okay except for b/d confusion. I showed her the trick of seeing that the bump on the d looked like a c and the bump on the b didn't. She had trouble remembering this. I drew a C and a backward C (sorry, I don't know how to do this on the computer.); when she got confused, I referred her to these forms, reminding her that the bump on the d looked like a c. After some practice, she was able to get 100% accuracy. I am expecting to have to start from scratch tomorrow. I don't know if she has cognitive problems or psychological ones. If she panics every time she has to perform, it would be hard to tell the cause.
When I got home, I reread chapter one of my book. I was working on a way to include some information from the Hidden Brain program on Clicker Training. It isn't the clicker training I was interested in per se. I was interested in nonjudgmental teaching and the argument that good teaching requires a teacher to break down the subject into its components and even smaller subcomponents for struggling students. A student's success rests with the teacher. Of course, the program referred to adults, accomplished learners, and highly motivated students. Not what you find with students who have already failed as learners. Their objective is to avoid humiliation and pain. If that means dodging my lessons, that's what they'll do. Another subcomponent of the teaching is convincing students they will survive failure.
The other limitation of the clicker program was that the lessons they were referring to were all movement-driven: tying a surgical knot, throwing a Frisbee, or dunking a basketball. It is much easier to break these down into components because you can see what someone is doing to accomplish the act. You can see the sequence of movements you must teach and the exact position of your body part in relation to the objectives you want to manipulate. Reading doesn't afford us a clear window into the components and subcomponents of the skills involved. I always try to ferret out by watching what I do and imagining what must have gone into learning it. I watched what the student had trouble with and figured out what the blockage was about. I often have to make up something new. That's why I love teaching — I love problem-solving.
The other glitch in their argument was in talking about nonjudgmental teaching. They mean taking the teacher's emotional responses to the student's performance out of the picture, removing the opportunity to feel and express frustration or elation. If the teacher's response is suppressed, the student focuses on the task rather than the teacher. Nonjudgmental does not mean not judging the student's performance. You can say, "No, that's not it. Do it this way." You are just supposed to say it in a matter-of-fact way that does not show frustration or joy.
I love showing joy when my students accomplish a task. Yes, I am going to manipulate them to become more engaged students with my joy. I celebrate their small victories over themselves. For instance, today, D could catch his errors as he read the letters sequentially in continuous text. It is a whole other ball game. Or when B started using context clues to help figure out a word in a story. These are major gains. The little girl I worked with today remembered five letters in sequence. In contrast, when we started, she could only remember 3. I tried to avoid any signs of frustration. I tell students that the worst that can happen is that they fail, and then we start again.
The expression "Start again!" comes from my meditation practice. The leader always says this at the start of every meditation session. It's almost like the song "Tomorrow!" from Annie. Both expressions are full of hope and forgiveness.
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