Thursday, December 22, 2022

 Thursday, December 22, 2022 

   I had to get up by six today because we had driveway yoga at seven. Besides Yvette teaching the class, Scott and I were there and Deb by Facetime from Seattle. 

  At 8:30, I had my morning session with Mama K's crew. They were on time today. I started with third-grade Twin E. She remembered the names of the vowel letters. She could name all the images representing the short vowels: apple, elephant, igloo, octopus, and umbrella. I had them memorize the pictures rather than the sounds. With Twin E needing more help learning to read than Twin A because of memory problems, I continued reading the Carpenter materials. I had her reread the fifth story. I was looking for some degree of fluency because of familiarity. While she remembered very, a word she had trouble learning, she labored over each word, including is.

  On a good note, after I showed her how to use her knowledge to decode the word when, She knew the word ten, could isolate -en, and blend the wh with the -en. When she came across the word again, she said "ten" to help cue herself. Fantastic!!

  With Twin A, I also reviewed the vowel names, the pictures for the short vowel sounds, and the phonemic sound represented. I started using different materials with her, including stories from the QRI reading inventory. These stories are used to evaluate the students' reading; they are not considered teaching material, but why not?

   The second word in the text was lost. I asked what the vowel letter was in this word. Twin A said, "L?" I wrote the vowel letters on the paper. "Remember, these are the vowel letters. Is L one of them?" No. Which vowel letter is in the word? She got it. I taught her to blend the word starting with the vowel and blending on the sounds after before blending the sounds that come before the vowel sound. She read the whole first passage at a low pre-primer level. We started on the second story at a slightly higher level. These passages are not oriented around phonics. They reflect the philosophy of the Whole Language approach. Students are supposed to use the first and last letter of the word and guess it. Oh, dear. Twin A did that with one word. It was the correct meaning but bore no resemblance to the word.  

   Fourth-grade K was next. Twin E was supposed to get him. He didn't arrive in a timely way. I had to call Mama K to get him to the meeting. Twin E said, "K, you're the next victim," and walked away. 

   I asked K if he remembered the addition with regrouping we did yesterday. I set up a two-digit addition problem with regrouping. Nothing. I represented both numbers with expanded notation. Then he got it. Within five minutes, he could do addition by regrouping with four digits. I have no idea why this boy has problems learning in class. It takes me fifteen minutes to teach him a concept. He said he finds the lessons in school confusing.

  I had second-grade M immediately after. She is a different story. We worked on adding and subtracting by tens yesterday. We had worked on adding by hundreds; she had no problems with that. Today, I asked her to count down by 100s. "What is 100 less than 900?" Her answer was, "90." Oh, boy. I had her add by 100s and wrote them down in a column going from the bottom up. Then, starting from the top, I wrote 900 again. "What is 100 less than 900?" All she had to do was look at the numbers in the other column. She got it. We'll see if it holds.

  Immediately after my session with M, I had a session with Shelly. I told her of my vision of emptiness when I saw myself as hollowed out. It was a lovely, relaxing image rather than one evoking despair. I had some confidence the image wasn't all bad because I arrived at it by confronting pain rather than running away from it. Aside from sharing that image, I sat with grief and heartache. 

   Four pairs of Oofos were delivered several days ago. They sat around my feet in their unopened plastic bags as I sat in my old-lady chair. I finally opened them and tried them on. They were too small for my feet. At first, I thought the European sizing didn't match the American sizing. I saw it said clearly on the package 6/8, signifying a women's size 8 and a men's size 6. I had wanted a women's size 10 and a men's size 8. I gave the wrong information. The customer care clerk was wonderful and arranged for me to return all four pairs. They didn't have one pair in the color I wanted. I got a refund for that pair and replacements for the other three. Having made a mistake on the ordering last time, I was concerned I had made a mistake again. I called to check. It was a good thing I did; the order was for a women's size 12 and a men's size 10. That would have been too big for me. This mistake was not mine. 

  I read the directions for my new four-inch chain saw carefully. This is a dangerous instrument. I wanted to err on the side of safety. I did learn to be careful to oil the blade before each use and clean it afterward to preserve the edge.

   I had a 4:30 session with ninth-grade K. He was sitting in a car on the phone. He did that regularly in our Wednesday afternoon sessions when he met me in a break between his judo classes. I asked him where he was. He was at home. I asked why he was sitting in the car. "I'm drawing." This is how he answers. The answer is accurate but unrelated to the spirit of the question. Why does he respond in this way? Is he cognitively or psychosocially impaired, or is he just hostile? I grilled him to get the whole story. 

   He had just returned from a trip around town while his mom delivered Christmas presents. He had been drawing when they arrived. He didn't want to stop and, therefore, didn't get out of the car. The boy drives me nuts!