Saturday, December 10, 2022

 Saturday, December 10, 2022

  I got up early because of an 8 am session with part of Mama k's crew. There was no response to the Zoom invitation. I called, but I got no response. Mama K called around 8:30 to apologize. The woman lives a crazy, stress-filled life. Fourth-grade K came on first. On a diagnostic test, he was found to be functioning on the first-grade level in Number and Operations. Last time, I saw a possible problem with estimating when he said 10 +10= 20 and 15 +15= 20. When I compared 51 + 43= versus 54 + 45=, he immediately understood the second problem would have a bigger answer than the first because the addends were larger. His tone questioned my intelligence for asking such a stupid question. He was exhausted during our Wednesday afternoon classes. Mama K explained her kids wake up early. That's why they're tired when they come home from school. I also know he watches videos when in bed. The tablet is his blankie, his comfort object. 

   He had no problems adding two-digit numbers with regrouping. Then I tried 2-digit subtraction with regrouping. Oops! First, he added the numbers together, ignoring the operation sign. Then he tried subtracting the top number from the bottom instead of regrouping. He had trouble with regrouping. He had the principle but needed help understanding how to apply it to all the digits in a three-digit problem.

  Ah, then I discovered he didn't readily know the answer to N-1=. He believed he had to have them memorized. I asked him to count back from ten. He had no problem doing that. He did just fine when he used that knowledge to answer the questions. His problems may be because of a misunderstanding of what learning means. He assumes he has to memorize everything.

   I had one of the third-grade twins after my session with K. I thought I had Twin E. Twin E had more problems with reading than Twin A. I  selected two stories from the Carpenter materials. A lower level one for Twin E than Twin A.  

    It wound up I had the twins confused. Twin A zoomed through the story I gave her to read, which was intended for Twin E. I was thrilled, thinking it was E. This was incredible. When the second Twin came on,. t discovered  I had them mixed up; I wasn't disappointed. Twin A's performance was also amazing. She read with fluency. 

   Twin E read the more difficult selection I had selected for Twin A. She did better than I expected. She struggled but did reasonably well. Slow and steady won the race. She read with limited automaticity. After she struggled through a paragraph, I asked her if she wanted to stop or continue. She chose to continue. Wow! That was incredible.

   I called Mama K to give her the good news about her children: K's problem was not that serious, and both girls sounded better.

  I got a call from Adolescent D's mother to share good news. D had attended a dance at school. Parents came up and told her how D participated in the event. Then on the way home, he interrupted his sister to announce that he wanted to talk about the event- and then he did. He gave a detailed description. This was an amazing turn of events. This was out of character for him, both asserting his desire to talk and sharing the details.

   I got a call from a mother interested in tutoring for her fourth-grade son, who has reading problems. The private school the W sister and eighth grade K attend recommended me. Unfortunately, she wants in-person sessions. I only do Zoom sessions. I told her I had good results on Zoom. She said she would look for someone else or get back to me after the holidays.

   I spent the day reading Out of the Dust. I want to have it finished before my session with sixth grade W. I have been reading two similar books, one for W and one for K. They are both told in blank verse; they both have girls as the main character, and they both have the death of the mother and the resilience of the adolescent main character.

     I did some work on updates. I needed to catch up in posting my email updates. The blog updates are easier to keep up with. I wrote those entries over a year ago. They still need to be reread and edited, and run through Grammarly, but I don't have to compose them from notes. They take less time. 

    Yesterday, I posted my YouTube videos on The Phonics Discovery Method. It had an impact. I had three hits for both Phase I and Phase II videos.