Saturday, January 29, 2022

 Saturday, January 29, 2022  

 

   I dealt with waves of shame this morning as I lay in bed. These were not thought generated. My conscious mind was not involved. I had no idea why this was going on. I used the Vipassana to deal with this. One wave would pass; I'd have a break, and then another wave would come. Now I wonder if our thinking comes after the sensation instead of the other way around. Our thoughts arise to explain our physical experience so we don't feel crazy.

    I had no pain when I got up during the night. I was pain-free until my morning walk. I felt metatarsal discomfort and throbbing through the heel.

    I had sessions with the M & W sisters. First-grade M has been struggling. After she made progress, she had a setback. Her teacher's evaluation of her reading showed she had made no progress. Then the teacher called Mom and told her M's concentration had degenerated. I saw something similar. When she was doing well, she focused on the activity. Now, she was shifting around in her seat, taking care of things in the room, and generally losing focus.

    Today I asked M if she wanted to read one of her old stories or write a new one. She said neither. What did she want to do? Could we play a game? I told her it depended. She thought for a moment and could think of nothing. Then she asked if we could read one of the old stories we read when we started, the Carpenter stories, which are all transcribed. We read #6. She was a little thrown by its length but launched into it. She made two errors but read most of it correctly. Then she asked if I could make the sounds and let her figure out the word. Wow! You'd better believe it. 

       This request generated an activity I never used, never thought of using. Not that I'd never done that with students with individual words, just not quite the same way, and not without seeing the printed word. The 5 Stories video breaks words into their phonemes, but the student doesn't have to figure out the word; they just listen. I asked her if we could do this where I made the individual sounds, and she told me where to put the dashes into a word. I shared low second-grade material. She was fully focused on this activity. If you can get a student to design an activity, they always know what they need.

        Of course, there are exceptions when they select an activity that has nothing to do with reading. She showed two interesting problems. She had to tell me where to put the dashes by naming the two letters. In a word like pat, the dashes go between the p and a and between the a and t. She had two problems. First, she wouldn't use the word between. She would just name the letters "p' and "at." I asked her to say between; she said no. What is that about? It indicates a problem; I don't know which one. Is it spatial? Does she have difficulty identifying spatial relationships? Or is it linguistic? She doesn't use the word between. Of course, it could be some combination of the two.

      The second problem was she'd list the order of the letters backward. In pat, instead of saying /pa/, she would say /ap/. This again indicates directional problems. 

   Then I worked with fifth grade W. We continued editing and accurate reading. She said she is doing better with both when reading in school.

     With Ukraine in the news daily, I finally understood why Mike was upset when I said his family came from Russia. He would correct me, "Ukraine!" In my youth, Ukraine was part of Russia. For me, saying they came from Russia was the same as saying someone who lived In Hawaii was from the USA. Mike, of course, followed the politics and knew Ukraine was now an independent nation. No one can miss that point now that we are on the brink of war with Russia over Ukraine. Got it, hon!