Wednesday, March 31, 2021

 Wednesday, March 31, 2021

            

            I wrote a response to a question posed by one of the participants in the Zoom Presentation: "Is it important to learn the vowels?" Now, I have to find a way to share it with her.

            I finally decided for Yvette that we would not install the new window. I got ambivalent messages from her about it. When I purchased the reel lawnmower, she praised it, so happy not to have a stinky, noisy machine mowing the lawn in front of her house. She had nothing good to say about the window. She was 'willing' to have it installed. I think I pushed something on her she didn't want. There was some drama with the exchange, but I felt calmer afterward. My instinct said something was wrong. I may, of course, be wrong about that, but I am happy with my decision for now.

            I had an appointment with my 4th grade D. He still misses words and overlooks misread words that don't make sense. 

            I have checked with Fs mother for feedback on her children. I was surprised to learn that she sees no difference in M's ability to infer in conversation. She is knocking the inferencing skills we're working on out of the park. We started on a third-grade level. It took a few passages to get her going. Then she rocked it. I skipped from level to level through the book. She is now working on grade level 5th, and she is still soaring. It occurred to me that her problem may be with nonverbal clues.   

            I asked mom if it was just in nonverbal contests or verbal ones. Mom replied, "Both." That didn't seem right to me. I called her. It came out mom was considering a description of the nonverbal interaction in a narrative. While words were used to describe a situation, it was a description of a nonverbal exchange.   I had to tell mom that her inferring from expository writing differed from inferring something that described a nonverbal situation. The two processes use different parts of the brain. Logic uses the left brain; the nonverbal, intuitive, uses the brain's right side. She had problems with empathy. I could feel mom deflating. She knew what that meant. I have thought for some time that M. is on the autism spectrum. Mom knows the significance of that characteristic since her seven-year-old has a clear-cut case of autism. I never said the words "autism spectrum." I wanted to find out if there are services available for M before I push mom in that direction. 

            I set the computers up in the library for the Zoom presentation. First, I had to get the recording function to work. Ah, it occurred to me that I was in the Step-Up Tutoring account. I imagine Step-Up does not provide the recording option to protect the children. When I changed it to my personal account through Yahoo, I had a recording button.    I did only one or two slides. I was calmer and more controlled- less nervous. I had been concerned about getting through in a timely way. I won't have to bother doing that with YouTube. People can stop it and come back to it. There won't be any participants.