Saturday, May 13, 2023

 Saturday, May 13, 2023

      This morning, my scale was at 148 bs. It comes off quickly and on just as quickly if I'm not careful.   

        I had Mama K's crew at nine am. I started with fourth-grade K. I continued working on comprehension. Like some of my other students, he confuses answering questions from their store of knowledge versus reporting what the author said. Today's passage led us to work on geography. Is Hawaii a state or a country? A country. This is a common confusion in Hawaii. Many native Hawaiians speak of Hawaii as a nation the USA forced to become a state. However, students also needed clarification about it in Ohio; was Ohio a state or a country? I pulled up maps of the USA. When I was a child, there were only 48 states. I remember when the USA became 49 states and then 50. Ah, maybe not. Alaska became a state in January 1959, and Hawaii in August 1959. I was a freshman in college. It couldn't have been a big deal for me.   

       Twin A continued reading a 2nd-grade passage. Her comprehension is always good.

     In our last session, I learned Twin E had trouble processing letters. They changed; one word became another. I have seen this in many students. Inspired by Ron del Davis, I designed a system for controlling that movement. I wrote the word wear; she said it became what. Huh?! Kids with unstable visual images see shifting individual letters or whole words, not entirely different words. What was going on? I asked. 

      Do you look at the first letter and guess the word? Yes. According to the Sold a Story podcast, this is how the Whole Language method teaches students to read words, guess the word from the first letter in the word, and how it fits into the sentence to create meaning. I had her say every letter before she gave me the word. Her word recognition accuracy improved by almost 100%. She even read the word saw accurately for the first time instead of reading it as was. Of course, that had nothing to do with the first letter. When she said s-a-w before she said the word, she paused before saying the word, forcing herself to override her automatic response. The only word she missed was our. She couldn't infer the word from context either. Twin A does a dynamite job inferring the word using context.  

     I came home from one of my short walks to find a pee stain on the lanai carpet. What?? This is new. Elsa would poop on the carpet but never pee. Also, she has easy access to the outside through the doggie door. Why did she do this? The best I can figure out, she was pissed because I didn't take her with me on the walk when she needed to piss. Oh, dear.

   B had invited me to an award ceremony for Elijah. I texted him yesterday, asking him to remind me exactly when it was. I thought it was Saturday at 5:30. I heard nothing. I texted him again. Still nothing. I was concerned; B usually tries to get back to me. I called. Yes, it was today. He texted me last night. We wondered why I hadn't received it. He was ready to leave at 12:30. I wasn't up for leaving that early. B wanted to go so he could spend more time with his grandson. Understandable. He said he would leave later if I wanted to go. Absolutely not. He should leave and enjoy his time with Elijah.  

     I texted B around 7:30 pm, asking what the award was for. The school had called his mother to tell him he was getting an award and to make sure he had a fresh haircut and was wearing his Sunday best. B texted, "3.5 3.8 still going." I had no idea what the numbers meant. I got the explanation later. Elijah had a 3.5 to 3.8 for all four years. The award ceremony went on for over three hours. I was so glad I didn't go. I can't think of anything worse than an award ceremony that lasts forever. 

   B called while he was driving Elijah home. Did I want to go to his graduation? He had extra tickets. The only graduations I was willing to suffer through were Damon's, Yvette's, and my niece and nephews, Karin and David's. Ah, I remember attending Mike's niece's graduation from Cornell. I told Elijah to ask his siblings. It would have a lot of meaning for them.    

      I didn't want to go to my graduation from Rutgers when I got my master's. Mike insisted. I was in my assigned seat well before the start of the ceremony. I glanced up to find Mike and my mother sitting in the bleachers. Their pride was blinding. It was worth suffering through the rest of the event for that moment.  

    The gardeners came today. They come once a month to maintain the property. They trimmed the row of Ficus trees that created a border between our property and B's shed. They block my view of the Pacific Ocean if they get too big. They could use a hedge trimmer if they did it often enough before the new growth branches got too thick. Instead, he sent two of his men with manual clippers. I watched them stand in the tree as if they were on a ladder. I asked Rodney how they did it. Yes, they had climbed and were standing on the branches. He said, "We say our people were born in the trees." They're from the Marshall Islands, refugees from nuclear contamination created by the USA.   

     I worked with Kindergarten Steven later in the afternoon. It had been a while since I worked with him. His mom followed up on what I had started. She reported he was finding the bounces in words on his own. It was something he had fun doing. However, she couldn't get him to identify the words' individual sounds (phonemes). When she asked him the sounds in the word Steven, he said Ste and ven, identifying the sounds in each bounce (syllable) but not the individual sounds within the syllable.  

      Steven was obsessed with astronomy right now. He refuses to learn anything not related to it. This is good because he is motivated to learn and bad because he doesn't want to learn about anything else. While he is good in math and has enjoyed it, he has now declared he doesn't want anything to do with that. He has wanted nothing to do with reading. His mom told him he could learn more about astronomy if he learned to read. No, he could learn everything from YouTube. He has learned a lot. He can lecture on the subject for five minutes straight. His mom videoed it. He is remarkably bright. Both his parents are exceptionally bright.  

     I found a reading selection for children on Mars. I read some of it to him. When I hit two or three phoneme words, I sounded them and asked him to figure out the word. He had trouble with it. I was relieved. He doesn't want to do the work because he can't do it, not because he doesn't want to. We worked like that for twenty minutes. I read some of the text, discussed it, and asked him to figure out words from the individual sounds. He never protested the phonemic exercise. He acted as if he thought it was fun.  

   At one point, his mom intervened. I jumped down her throat, telling her to stay out of it. I had assumed she was responding out of anxiety. When I spoke to her later, it wasn't that. She said the sound system wasn't that good. I know the sibilants are hard to hear over Zoom, the /s/, /f/,/sh/, etc; she should do it. That would be better anyway. She can do it at her convenience, here and there, during the day. With any luck, he will reciprocate and challenge her.  

      I opened my new Apple computer. I plugged it in to charge the battery. Scott came out to help me set it up. He didn't get much beyond setting up a password to get into the computer. He didn't know how to do much else. I was delighted with his company. I don't have that often enough from anyone, just hanging around doing something together. Scott mostly stays in his room or goes out. I had that wonderful sense of companionship with Mike. Boy, do I miss it! Most of my contact with people is for a purpose, such as visiting or tutoring.  

     I started watching Firefly Lane on Netflix. I love it. Heigl is good; at least, she is fun to watch.