I stayed in bed till 6:30. I can’t do that on driveway yoga days, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays because I have to walk and feed Elsa before the class at 7.
Dorothy and I have our morning routine down now. I call her every morning while on my walk. Today she told me that she figured out how to mail the clips I ordered from Acoustical Surfaces. Having the company send it to me would have cost over $150. Sending the same clips to her in New Jersey only cost $33. She went to the post office to pick up Priority Mailboxes. She thought she would need two boxes, but she said they all fit neatly into one. She will mail them out by the end of the week for $14 additional dollars. Let’s see $14 + $33= $47. $150-47=$103. Thank God there is such a thing as Amazon Prime that comes with free shipping.
I washed a section of the lanai rug last week. I didn’t move the furniture back because I wanted to make sure it was thoroughly dried before I did. Mold loves everything here. I even left the fan at that end of the lanai on 24/7 to ensure drying. Today, I finally moved the furniture back into that spot after giving them a good dusting. I also wiped down the electrical wires that reside back in that corner. They were dirty. I think I remember dust accumulating on wires in Princeton and Ohio. Here mold also speckles the surfaces.
I had a Zoom tutoring session with D. today. I had figured out how to use Zoom’s whiteboard and used it for both the math work and the reading. D. said the multiplication fact cards with the answers had been posted by his grandmother. I used the whiteboard to see if I could trigger his memory. I would write the problem down on the whiteboard. If he gave the correct answer, I would write it in and then erase it. When he got the wrong answer, I would cue him by forming the number in the tens place and then the one in the one’s place. For example, 6 x7=; I wrote the first two strokes to form the number 4. I had put in the first two strokes at one point, and he guessed the number 3. Hmmm! I wonder what this says about his visual perception. Was he just not paying attention, or is there something else going on?
I focused on a comprehension exercise today. I did a tally of all the characters, page by page. This is an exercise to show students how to determine who the main characters are. He made some interesting interpretations as we went along.
There was one passage that talked about George and Debbie’s father telling them to stop bickering; they were both going to have to perform a task. I asked D. if he thought that dad had been in the scene or if the kids were just remembering something that had happened earlier in the day. Initially, he imagined the scene as happening in real-time. He switched the scene in the middle of the chapter and had them eating breakfast at home. He finally realized that was not the case.
My interpretation is as I described above: the kids were remembering something that had happened earlier. D. stuck to his idea that this described something Dad was doing at the moment. He explained that Dad had driven to the shopping center and told them to stop bickering and driven away. A little extreme, but a much better interpretation than the kids were suddenly back at home having breakfast with their mom and dad. I let it go because it didn’t disturb the flow of the story. I have reread books I read even recently and have found mistakes I made or different interpretations.
Ah, that reminds me. To review the pages we covered, I read them out loud at top speed. I made a mistake on one line and corrected it. I asked him if he caught that I did that. He said yes. Then he said, “Good work!” because that’s what I say to him when he catches his mistakes instead of just ignoring them. I thanked him. I was thrilled he did that.
I finished the session by having him say all the letters in the first sentence on top of the next page. He did a good job rattling off the letters. However, he didn’t stop at the end of the sentence. I’m not quite sure why. Was he having fun saying the letters, or does he not know what a sentence ends? We’ll see.
Then I had him tell me the phonemes in some words in the sentence. We didn’t have time to do all of them. The other day I had an insight. Today I acted on it. I asked him if he thought he had to remember the correct phoneme in a word or discover it? He said he thought he had to remember it. Wow! Over and over, I have told him, listen to the sounds you make, feel the shapes your mouth makes as you make the sounds. However, I have never been explicit about his need to find the answer through observation instead of remembering the correct answer. What a difference it made in his performance! This is a problem for many kids; they think they have to remember something someone has told them. Discovering the answer on their own is not an option. Teachers teach different strategies for solving math problems, but it’s just something else to be remembered for many of these kids. This is deadly for learning. It is deadly for surviving in our current world, where problem-solving skills are a must.
The need for independent thinking has not always been the case. In fact, someone who thought independently and came up with a different solution than the tribe had already developed could be considered a danger to tribal stability. I remember a story about a Greek village that was plagued with starvation. This one woman was living on the outskirts of the village, who was doing quite nicely. It came out that she was eating snails. That was not acceptable for the village. I believe they killed her. The need to maintain existing standards can be deadly, but breaking existing standards can also be deadly for the community members. It’s the old tug of war between the conservatives and the progressives. We need both. I think there were periods in history where we needed one more than the other. I believe we need both these days. As they pull in their opposite directions, we can find a solution in the middle. Is the middle ideal? Often not, but it may be optimal.
On that note: I have been disturbed by the damage done by the demonstrators in Portland. My concern is the violence invalidates the Black Lives Matter protestors. Destroying property is just a temper tantrum. I think peaceful demonstrations on the order of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. are more effective. I’m not saying there is never a need for stronger action; I just don’t see it a valuable now.
I thought, “Those fools; they’re playing right into the hands of those who oppose the Black Lives Matter movement.” Come to find out, more out-of-state right-wingers are being arrested than BLMs demonstrators. I would love to believe that only the right-wingers are causing the damage, but I am sure angry people are looking for a place to vent their anger on both sides.
I had a telephone appointment with a possible new client. His father called me an hour after I posted my ad on Craigslist. While many people can’t get their acts together to get their kids online for their regular schooling, this man called me shortly after his son got off the plane. His son moved here to live with his dad. He turned 14 on the day of his trip. The dad knew nothing about his son’s academic performance. He was getting ahead of the game.
The boy said he did need help with spelling. In our conversation, it came out he didn’t do well on any of his tests. However, his mother said the school said he did well in all his work. I am wondering what ‘well’ means in that private school. As far as I can figure out, there were no standardized tests administered. I’m not a great lover of the standardized tests administered in public schools. They take half the school year.
But on the other hand, with no standardized testing, I’m going to have to figure out his skill level on my own. Is he just having problems studying for tests, or does he have underlying difficulties with reading and spelling/? We’ll find out.
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