Thursday, June 24, 2021

 Thursday, June 24, 2021

 

Yesterday, Yvette sent an email with a video modeling a little dance routine. It's for some cause. It sounds like a form of the 'ice bucket challenge.' I spent a good part of last night practicing. It's not as easy for me to remember a movement sequence as it once was. I figured it would be good for me even if I didn't participate in the video. This morning, Yvette, Elise, and I practiced it. I did reasonably well until my hip gave out. There was some move I made that triggered a spasm. It knocked me out. Yvette had to get a chair and put it under my tush. It may be that triggering that reaction is good for me. I had till Saturday at 4:15 to get the routine down pat. We met at a park by the oceanfront for the official filming. 

At 8:30, I worked with K's children, her son K, and the twin girls. I had A first. She still was having trouble remembering the name for the letter n. She calledl it by another name. I continued with the drill, saying, "This is . . .," while I marked a particular letter. I counted to five. If she said nothing, I named the letter. After working on the letter n for a while, I moved to another letter and then back again to n; she could not remember its name. The first task is figuring out how to help her to remember. Yesterday, she didn't participate because she had taken cough medicine the night before for a cough. She still seemed groggy this morning.

E. had problems yesterday when she read the word mat as map. The p and the t sounds share two out of three characteristics: they are both voiceless and stops. Also, the m predisposes her to form another bilabial sound; both m and p are formed by pressing the lips together. I went over the meaning of the two words. She had no idea what a map was. Her mom showed her a map of their neighborhood on her phone. That might help. Then, I worked on discerning the difference between the /t/ and the/p/ sounds, visually watching the mouth formation and by sound. She needed help at this level. On a positive note, she immediately recognized most of the other words in the -at family:  bat, fat, hat, and pat. She got more correct on our first day. I'm not distressed yet. The learning process does not go in a straight line. As the brain takes in new information, it must compare it with existing information and reorganize. I am giving her time to do it.

When I worked with the twins' older brother K, I continued with the Neurolinguistic Programming exercise of visualizing the letters in a word and 'reading' the letter from left to right and then from right to left. I numbered the letters in his name. Yesterday, he rocked. Today he had trouble understanding 'the letter before.' I even numbered the letters in his name from 1-8 for his first name and 1-4 for his last. He had trouble remembering the sequence of the letters of his last name, reversing the order of the last two letters. Once he got that straight, he wrote his first and last name. His handwriting is impressive.

At 10 am, I joined in on Julia's Step Up Tutoring Zoom office hours. I am still having problems with the Book Nook reading program. I think the program is good; just learning to administer it is a steep learning curve. Julia showed me how to have my tutor's screen open while I have the student's screen open on Zoom's share so I can see both. I still don't know how to get back to the story we were working on the day before.

In the afternoon, I had a session with J. We tried the Book Nook site again. I used what I learned that morning from Julia and created a split-screen to see the student's screen through Zoom screen share and the tutor's screen. I could get out of the game and proceed with the testing aspect of the program to determine his reading level. He stopped at level X, two-thirds of the way through sixth grade but not at the end of the year. We worked on some stories. He made careless mistakes as he read. His comprehension problem is that he can't generalize and think abstractly. He always gives literal and specific answers. It is a cognitive style. 

I don't believe different cognitive styles reflect 'intelligence.' While thinking abstractly and doing 'higher-order thinking skills' is au current, in style, in our current culture, it wasn't always. In another culture, that kind of thinking might be strongly discouraged. That doesn't make the person any less intelligent.

Judy called. She told me her sister Paulette and her house quest, Carol, were working on a jigsaw puzzle in an open-air space. She was inviting me to stop by and work on it. Judy is anti-vaccine. She, her son Adam, and her daughter-in-law, Jazzy, have all had Covid. The latter two were deathly ill. Judy had a mild case. Despite her sneezing and coughing all over the place, neither her husband nor her sister, who were around her all the time and unvaccinated, got sick.  

Judy tried to convince me that I was not in any real danger. I was vaccinated, and I was unlikely to catch it from them. Her question was, how long would I keep up my protective isolation? It could go on forever. It could. Was I prepared to risk my life for some face-to-face company at close range? Good question.