Thursday, July 14, 2022

 Thursday, July 14, 2022

   

   The gardener arrived before my first appointment at 8:30. I wanted to talk to him about using the 30% vinegar mix instead of Round-Up. He tried it last month. There was close to no effect where he sprayed. Scott sprayed in the area off my bedroom with much more success. I didn't understand. Rodney insisted he wasn't a vinegar man; he was a Round Up man, and I should have Scott spray my yard. Scott is not my employee. I can't tell him what to do. Back to the drawing board. I do need someone to help me spray the yard.

   I had a tutoring appointment with the M & W sisters at 8:30. I worked with them separately for half an hour each. I usually start with going-into-second-grade M first. I had her read the story we wrote together. The story is at the level of her speaking skills, above a second-grade level. We made some changes in the text as we went. I found a mistake I made, and she wanted to add more details. She didn't think about editing the text; she thought about making the story more accurate. She was still naïve about the writing process. The big lesson for her was working on communicating her thoughts. When I didn't get what she meant immediately, she would say, "Never mind." I pushed her to work on getting her ideas through to me, assuring her it was important that I understood what she wanted to say.

   With going-into-sixth-grade W, we continued working on the Gating Game. We described sleeping in the garage because her mother threw her out of the house because of her attitude. She slept on a bed in a van in the garage. She was exhausted because M had joined her in the garage. They slept in the same bed, and M stole the blankets. W couldn't get them back because the blankets were under M. I talked about the situation with W for a while. I wanted to check if this was an abusive situation. W said she could come back in the house whenever she liked. She stayed out there to make a point of her independence. She liked sleeping out there. I planned to continue checking the situation.

   Later in the day, I had adolescent D. He did a remarkable job reading the word list I modified. He read most accurately- note still not all. He caught all his errors except one; he read want as he went.  

  I modified the list in the following way: 

s-a-d: b-a-d, c-a-d, d-a-d, f-a-d, g-a-d, h-a-d, l-a-d, m-a-d, p-a-d, t-a-d. I wrote every word I could with a similar pattern, also known as word families.  

   When I expressed excitement about his reading, he dismissed his work, saying, "This is easy. All the words are the same except for the first letter." Looking at how I transcribed the words, you will see I separated every phoneme with a dash and bolded the word pattern. It was the first time he registered that there was a pattern and made use of it. No, it was not the first time I pointed out to him that there was a pattern, and learning the pattern made reading much easier. 

   I needed more Kangen water. I need a refill once every three days. Paulette said she was available at 11. Then she texted me to say something came up. She would drop off the water. It was easier than giving me a time when I could come up to get it and visit. I was walking when I saw Paulette and Judy pull up on their way to town. They couldn't get in the driveway because the gardeners had their trucks there. I rushed back home. When I got there, Paulette was already back in the car. She told me she had set the full bottles on my counter and had picked up the empty ones. 

  At three, I had a consultation with a new client. I wanted to get a better idea of what the child would need. It was an uncomfortable discussion. I didn't know if this was unusual because she was uptight about subjecting her daughter to an unknown situation. She had told me about her child's strengths. The last time we spoke was over a month ago. I had forgotten much of what she said. I remembered she had a son in first or second grade who she was homeschooling. Oops! She had a daughter. I wanted some basic information about her reading skills. Well, I was in for a surprise. She was seven years old, and, no, she could not identify all the letters in the alphabet. She could only read a few sight words securely, like the, and and of. Wow! She was in much worse shape than the mother had led me to believe. She tried to tell me that her daughter didn't have problems like Mama K's twins, who she knew. Oh, boy! I made some rapid adjustments to my plans. 

   Jean, my Hanai sister, recommended two movies, Carrie's War and Frantz. She said Frantz dragged. She also recommended a short story she had read years ago, The Yellow Wallpaper. She read it when she was thirteen and remembered loving it. She came across another story by the same author, Herland, a utopian society made of all women. The Yellow Wallpaper portrays a man as a sinister villain. Herland is a perfect society of all women. I suspect the author is a hardline feminist. When I described what I got from Yellow Wallpaper, it was a horror story about a man who gaslights his wife. Jean said yes, she remembered it being something like that. I didn't read enough of it to find out why he abused her. Once I saw the direction, I skipped to the end of the story. It was too scary for me. I watched the first of the movie she recommended, Carrie's War. It was great. I looked forward to seeing what Frantz was about. Jean said it dragged. I guessed there was a lot of silence in it. I'd see.