I woke up at 4 am and couldn't go back to sleep. I had the feeling that one of my student's parents was pissed at me. She wants me to do class assignments with her daughter. She wants to see evidence that I am working with her on grade level. I can't work with her on grade level if she is not performing on grade level. Does mom want to get classwork done, or does she want me to help her daughter with her problem of not engaging background knowledge appropriately when reading? She sticks strictly to what the text has to say. Mom recognizes that she doesn't think out of the box, and that box is very small.
My problem is that I have seen this girl engage in background knowledge and cognitive empathy. If she could do it once, why can't she do it all the time? I suspect fear of making a mistake.
I was up and out the door by 4:30, completing my morning 6,000 steps before six. When I came inside, I meditated for an hour. I had time to wash the dishes and feed the dog before Yvette called me for driveway yoga.
Yvette has been doing an exercise with a strap, which is doing wonders for me. I loop the strap around the heel of one of my feet, then I pull tightly with straight arms while lying flat on my back. It's tadasana on steroids. I started with my legs lying on the ground. Now I lift them slightly off the ground. It strengthens my upper thigh muscles.
After class, I completed about 10 of the mini–NY Times Crossword puzzles. I love doing them on the tablet. I have quick confirmation if I'm on the right track. There's the check option. The incorrect letters are struck through with a red line. I can check without spoiling the rest of the puzzle for myself. There was only one mini-puzzle this morning that I gave up on. I pressed reveal almost immediately. There wasn't a single clue I recognized.
I finally went to pull up my updates file. I couldn't find it under recents. Huh? Oh, right. I spent last night deleting and consolidating files to make more room in my computer storage. I'm running out. I had three or four update files. I didn't need them all. I must have deleted the one I had been currently using. I had to reconstruct it from a variety of different sources. Fortunately, I was up-to-date in sending them out through email, so all were available for recovery. Being update-to-date is very unusual.
I had two short sessions with clients today. Et. 's father had to cancel our Friday evening session. I had texted him during the week because I had an idea. I pursued it this morning. The mother had told me that Et. had trouble saying the final g in dog. I concluded that he had problems with speech sounds that were formed in the back of the mouth. Then it occurred to me to ask if he could pronounce the /g/ if it was the initial sound. That would mean that my diagnosis was off. Sure enough, he has no problems when these sounds are the initial sounds.
Okay, revised diagnosis and revised suggestions. It sounds like Et. has trouble transitioning from a vowel to a final consonant. I recommended that the parents model,l saying the individual phonemes in a word family unit, like -an, individually, and then slowly blend them, holding the /a/ until they reach the n. The tongue shape changes while saying the /a/ when heading for the /n/. The tongue shape is different depending on the final consonant. I am now speculating that Et. has trouble moving from the relaxed tongue to the tense one. We'll see. I recommended that we only model the sounds at this point. He's an immature five-year-old. He will compulsively listen to anything the adults around him do.
I asked dad if they had seen any difference in Et. over the week. They said they were unable to do some of the exercises I recommended. But he is more confident when speaking to his peers in preschool.
I also had a session with Eb. I picked the words for her to work on. She analyzed the word Bricker, which she was able to read easily. For the decoding exercise, I picked the word urgency. I don't think of any specific phonics objective when choosing the word. It does wind up Eb. has trouble with the g=g&j and c=k/s rules. She pronounced the g in gen as a /g/. I went over the rule. I then asked her if that was clear. She kind of blew me off, "yeah, it was clear." Then she went to read the gen with a hard g. I led her through the exercise. I pointed out that the g was followed by an e. How should you pronounce that g if you follow that rule? "Oh!!!" We had to go through the same song and dance for the c before a y. We covered this rule before. I think there are problems with pattern recognition. Everything has to be learned as an isolated example of something.
Yvette texted me to say that the water in Kua Bay was calm; did I want to come down to the beach? She would meet me in the parking lot and carry my chair and whatever else I needed carried.
Scott had suggested that I go to the beach. Swimming in the ocean, just being by the ocean, is a distresser. I couldn't believe how fantastic it felt to be surrounded by water. I went in up to my neck. Yvette was by my side every minute; I held on to her hand. My legs are so much weaker despite all the walking I do.
My mother was more of a tiger than I am with less exercise. She went on a rafting trip down the Delaware River with Yvette, Damon, Yvette's brothers, Mike, and me. Damon, Yvette, and Mowg were in tires. Mike, mom, and one of Yvette's older brothers, and I were in a raft. We passed a stream with mild rapids. I got out of the raft, grabbed a tire, walked up the stream bed, and floated down. My 80+ mom decided she wanted to do this too. Okay. She walked up that stream bed. As she floated down into the Delaware's main flow, Mike was frantically manning the raft, terrified that she would slip by and float on downstream. My mom loved it. I don't think I could walk up that stream on my own carrying a tire now, and I'm younger than she was.
Yvette had told me she had brought some snacks, a skewer of chicken, and a small container of salad. That was my dinner.
Scott had been in the house all day, ripping up the old subflooring. His job was made much harder because of all the screws I had him put in through the carpeting to secure the subflooring. He had to saw a slice of the board out and then pry it up. When I got out of my shower, I went to check. He had just pulled up the last board. He is going to have to do some major reconstruction. The house isn't the best built. This better fix the problem with the sound. Or let's put it this way. I give up.
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Musings:
Living with contradictions. Some people can say two totally contradictory statements in one breath and see no problem. I suppose if you don't know the value of or the possibility of reconciling contradictions, that type of departmentalism makes sense. I can't imagine that we don't all do that to some extent. It is a stop-gap measure, if nothing else. If I can't find a way to reconcile them, I have to hold both thoughts.
I place myself far on the side of the bell curve of those who need to reconcile logical contractions. I am a dyed-in-wool dialectician. It influences everything I do. I believe there is value in all points of view.
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