Saturday, December 11, 2021

 Saturday, December 11, 2021

 

   On my morning walk, I got to speak to Jean, my hanai sister.  She and her husband, John, continue to be delighted with their new home in an extended care retirement community.  They are still unpacking.  When we moved here, Mike made sure everything was in place as quickly as possible.  He needed order.   

    I saw Julie coming toward me alone. "Where's your better/ worse half?" He was far behind her. He was stuck feeding the local wildlife, chickens, turkeys and pheasants, and any other birds that could get in on the bounty.  I turned around to walk with her to the intersection of Nehiwa and Hiolani. We stopped to talk there. She lived right across the street from where we were standing. I couldn't just stand there; my leg would start hurting.  We crossed the road and down her driveway.  She took me to the backyard to show me the fallen tree.  A thirty-year-old tree, taller than her two-story house, had broken below the ground on Sunday in the windstorm.  Vince had already sawed most of it into two-foot chucks.  I noticed balloons all over the yard.  Julie explained they were floaters used by fishermen to mark their nets. There must have been fifty of them. Julie wanted him to get rid of them. He could sell them; they're worth a lot of money.  Vince once found some Coast Guard equipment worth thousands of dollars.  He called the military. They were happy to come and get it.  Julie invited me inside to see her workroom. She has a business decorating hats, shirts and jackets, anything that can hold a logo.  She embroiders and applies latex emblems; sorry, I have no idea what the terms are.

   I asked Julie how she got into this business.  When she was a girl, she and her sister made their own clothes, and I think she said they did something else too.  Their sewing machine broke, and they needed a new one.  They didn't get a commercial one, but there was a free embroidering attachment. That was the beginning of everything. She was in business.  She got better and better machines, graduating to commercial quality equipment.  I didn't want to stay long. I had Elsa with me, and she hadn't pooped yet.  I made sure she stayed in the tiled hallway and did not go into her carpeted workroom.  

   I continued washing windows when I got home.  I finished the bank of six small casement windows at the back of the house. I set about cleaning the top of the breakfront sitting in front of them.  Boy, was it dirty!  I did 'dust' the top once.  Today I used a liquid cleaner. Yes, it has been several years since I cleaned in that room. But in all fairness, we had a volcano explode during that time. Some of the grime was lava dust.  I have it on my car no matter how frequently I wash it- and yes, it gets to visit the carwash regularly. It's black, okay, gravity blue. The spots show.

    I had the M & W sisters this morning. I used Phase III exclusively with M.  This is a protocol I just developed which involves dictation and spelling. Phase I involves developing phonemic awareness; Phase II involves applying the knowledge acquired in Phase I; it duplicates the reading process. I don't know if I could have used this process with students sooner.  I developed this process because third grade A asked me to work with spelling.  Phase III is the offspring of The Phonics Discovery System and spelling.  I have used spelling in another context, but not quite like this. I am using it in complete sentences, which I dictate to the student.  I use appropriate material, considering both their skill level and their egos. 

   The writing is neurologically more complex than reading:  

 

Part of writing is the macrostructure: the structure of the whole story or article.  Many people have trouble with the macrostructure, composing.

1. Composing a sentence

2. Recalling the sentence they compose.

3. Recalling the words in the sentence one at a time.

4. Spelling the recalled word

5. Writing the word.

 

In Phase III, I create an exercise that eliminates Steps #1 and 5.  I use published material 

Or material the students have dictated to me. 

1. They read the sentence 

2. Student repeats the sentence without looking at it 

3. Student identifies the first word.

4. Student spells the first word

5. Student identifies the second word

6. Student spells the second word, 

7. Repeat  steps #3 -#6 with each word

 

  With 5th grade W, I worked on the details of her story. I was not enjoying it because we had to describe an engineering project, fort building. I didn't have the verbal skill to explain what W and her cousins did, nor did she.  I used Phase III with her too. She enjoyed this.  This was a wonderful activity for her because she had no idea how to recall a composed sentence to write it. She is one of the few students who told her story without regard for my typing speed. That told me that she had no idea how to write a story herself.  I was impressed with W's spelling. She has a good visual memory for words and objects. She likes to draw.

     I had adolescent D at 11:30.  As always, I asked him if he had read anything in school the day before. Yes. Wow!  He read a story.  This was the second day in a row he reported having read something in class. Before this, he would always report he read nothing, and I do mean nothing. If words came in his line of sight, he wouldn't read them. I suppose he responded to print the way I might if I saw text written in Arabic.  I would know it was hopeless.  I wrote his English teacher about the results. I asked her to tell me what she was seeing. I was not expecting to hear from her. I used Phase III with D.  This would be a challenge for him.  I was nervous about doing it.  He didn't deal well with failure. I was concerned I would lose him. None of that happened. I wondered if I could have started this a lot sooner.  I remember my Orton-Gillingham instructor saying the students found the spelling exercises the most helpful.

      I spoke to D's mother later in the day.  I played a video of D reading a passage. It was at a low level, but it was still impressive. She had news for me, too, about the tutor the school was assigned to him.  My application as a tutor for D didn't go through at the public school because the DOE had hired a commercial tutoring company. This hurt. People want MacDonald's. I'm not MacDonald's, far from it. I understand why people do what they do. It still makes me sad. 

   I asked D's mom what her plans were for my relationship with D. She said she wanted to continue for the time being. I had done good work, and he had a good relationship with me. The tutor, who already contacted her, would be working with him by zoom during the school day for 2 hours a week. D's mom was concerned that he would be missing schoolwork.  The best solution is that the tutor works with him on the work he would be missing. If it's math class, work on word problems.

    I had an appointment with my acupuncturist later in the day. She immediately put needles in my adductor muscles. When she did that last time, it made a huge difference.