Monday, April 26, 2021

 Monday, April 26, 2021

 

Jean R. called to celebrate the good results of her EKG. She had been tired and was concerned that something was wrong with her heart. I was worried too. I took comfort from the information that she did not get winded from walking around the block- a big warning sign of heart problems.

            I had agreed to have 'office hours for the Step-Up tutors who wanted help reading at 11 am my Hawaii time/ 2 pm LA time. I hadn't seen an announcement. Was everyone else getting it except me? I didn't know how to sign in. I finally found a zoom address and used that. It wound up being the one for the woman who offered math help that I had contacted the other day. I had texted Julia to get information as to what I should do. She got back to me later in the day. She had been out because she had some personal business to attend to. She told me that I would only get a Zoom meeting ID if someone signed up. Good to know. 

            I texted J to arrange something for the day. He told me he wouldn't be available.   

I had an appointment with adolescent D.  He continued to show improvement. The hardest thing was getting him to remember to start with the vowel when decoding the word. If you don't have that, you will get nowhere. The vowel sound doesn't even have to be 100% accurate. Still, you have to determine it and the following consonant within the syllable if there is one.

    I did a brief review on encoding information into long-term memory. Today was the first time when D. remembered a word in the third sentence that he had struggled to decode in the first one. He said he just 'knew' the word. Yep, that's how it works when the memory system is functioning well.                            

     I got a call from a woman who told me that adolescent D's mom said I had done amazing work with her son. I guess she's not so unappreciative, just not as expressive as I would like. This woman's son is also fourteen years old. He has problems with handwriting and attention. We made an appointment for Wednesday at 10. She called her son, G., to the phone to tell me how to connect with him on Zoom. He knew nothing about her plans to hire a tutor for him. Oh, boy. I was concerned about how this was going to go. While adolescent D is shy and withdrawn, G seems outgoing and in charge. 

      I have my final appointment of the day with I. We just continued with our work on inferencing using the Barnell Loft. There were some glitches in comprehension today. In one case, she lacked the background knowledge making the passage incomprehensible. Also, there was one passage where a worm with illuminated segments was called the railroad worm. I. had to pick an answer. What does it look like, a bus, a streetlight, or a car? She picked streetlight. Fortunately, I asked her why. She had to describe her 'streetlight' - a rectangle with three lights. Oh, she meant a traffic light. Indeed, you could say it looked like the railroad worm. I have some idea when this material was written because my sister-in-law's 5th-grade teacher was one of the authors. In the early 50s, I don't think the yellow light was routinely included in the traffic light.

            I had a late appointment with my acupuncturist today because she would be out of town on Saturday. She does amazing work. I am excited about where this will lead. She works on my torso muscles rather than focusing on my bum leg. She also understands that the problem with my leg is made worse by problems with my back.