Tuesday, February 2, 2021
I didn’t get in my minimal requirement walking steps this morning. My leg was bothering me. Ben, the director of the Stem Cell Institute, said not to push it. I came home when I felt l I was straining.
I had a 9 am appointment with Kaiser to get my first Covid shot. Hawaii, Kaiser specifically, has done a fantastic job. We have a low caseload, and people are getting the vaccine in a timely manner. Reports of difficulties on the mainland abound.
When I arrived, I was impressed by how organized the program was. They had opened a large room for the purpose. You approached from one direction and left in another. There was a receptionist who did the intake. They had printed labels with our names to put on forms. After intake, I was told to sit inside. I was called, rolled up my sleeve, received the shot, and was told to sit in another area for fifteen minutes. We were carefully watched. How do I know?
As I left I signaled that I was about to leave and went through the exit door. One of the nurses came running after me to check if it was time for me to leave and if I was okay. It was so organized I almost cried; it was a thing of beauty.
When I got home, I called Laura W. from the Step-Up Program. She had listened to the presentation I had already put together and commented that it was very dense. After watching the math workshop on Friday, which emphasized student experimentation over information delivery, I told her that I should drop a lot of the information and just demonstrate the procedures. I would provide additional information in response to questions and challenges. She agreed.
As it wound up, she was already using my method with her student. I asked her to describe the problem. She said she had a problem with reading. I pushed her to be more specific. She said the girl read too fast. I have found students who do this have some misguided understanding of how others read. They’re not wrong; good readers just glance at a word and know it. These poor readers try the same trick; it just doesn’t work for them. I believe it is because they have not mastered visual discrimination. They look at the word as a whole. Their eyes do not pick up the details. We need to train our eyes to pick up details quickly. Otherwise “all words look alike.” Yes, that was a reference to how we see people of other ethnicities whose features we are not familiar with. I told Laura to have her student say every letter before she says the word. I wrote her later in the day asking if she would like more information on why saying every letter was important. She responded positively. I may dump all of chapter two from my book on her. It’s all about the visual processing aspect of reading.
I had two new students today. I was supposed to have three, but I forgot to call the dad and tell him I felt just fine after my vaccine. He was on his way to gymnastics with his daughter.
The first student was a 7-year-old boy in 2nd grade who was reading on a K level. I applied my Phonics Discovery System tactics. He could read the sentence, but it was labored. I guided him while he sounded out every phoneme and told me which letters represented those sounds. I helped him out with vowel digraphs.
When I spoke to his mother later, she said his problem was that he couldn’t put words together. I think I will start with the putting together strategy using the very words we used today for the breaking-apart aspect of the program.
I had a half-hour session with J. He wanted to work on math. He said he was having fun doing it. Yay! Isn’t that the goal of all good teaching, for a student to find learning fun? The problem: a worm crawls 10 cm in 4 minutes. How long does it take that worm to crawl 24 cm.? He set up 600/2.5 =24. Not even close. I drew the problem, counted the number of 2.5 segments in 24 cm. I couldn’t get him to understand the error of his ways. I had to figure out something for tomorrow; I may work with smaller numbers.
The second new student was with a 7-year-old girl who was in first grade. I had assumed she was in 2nd grade because of her age. Her mother was very concerned about her reading. No. She was reading on Level H. This would be a concern if she was in second grade; she would be close to a year behind, but J-level is the final of grade one. She made one mistake reversing letters, saying saw for was, and substituting wh for th in the word that. Her mother said she also has problems confusing b and d. The mother claimed she never had trouble learning to read. When I learned that her mother didn’t push her, I pointed out that she had no idea how her reading progressed when she was a child. I told the mom that she was sending her daughter the wrong message. I will be working with them to help mom be a more playful reading partner.
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