Wednesday, November 23, 2022

 Wednesday, November 23, 2022   

  I had a session with Adolescent D today. I wanted to work on spelling. I dictated the text of something he wrote for a school assignment. He didn't transcribe it himself; he dictated. I had him sound out the words. When he misspelled one, I ran it through spell check. I wanted him to see that Spell Check could give him the correct spelling if he came close enough. He could often recognize which of the options to use. He spelled many of the words correctly. Spelling exercises support word recognition skills.   Instead of using the text he wrote, I used text from a book I had at hand for another student.

  While I looked for text to use in today's spelling exercise, I asked him about his school day. He said he went to his old school today to help out. I thought, "Great! He is volunteering. Wouldn't it be great if he read with young children, helping them with their reading? He would be fantastic for that job. He is a gentle, caring person." He said no; he didn't read to the younger children. He didn't say why, but I suspected he was too embarrassed to read to anyone.

  It had been a while since I had done oral reading with him. We worked on analyzing words for their syllable pattern. I pulled up some third-grade-level text. As I suspected, he would never pass an oral reading test at this level. He regularly gets three to four words wrong, either skipping the word or misreading it. That would be a failing grade at that level. Besides the words he misses, he reads fluently at a good pace. When we worked at this level last year, It would take a whole session to get through one paragraph. Now, he can complete four or five, even with interruptions to cover decoding rules.

 I spoke to his mom later in the day. She said he was not helping out at the old school. He and another student, now also attending the online school with D, met to work together on the school's computers.  

   My guests came home from their northern visits to the Parker Ranch, the train museum, and Laupahoehoe Valley, where a tsunami wiped out all the homes and a school full of children. They stopped in Waimea on their way back to pick up some food, fresh fish, and sweet potatoes.

  When John was preparing to cook our dinner, he discovered the problem with the stovetop; the igniters had a problem. When you turned on one burner, the igniters on the other ones kept firing. It was annoying but not dangerous. I had Sears repairmen out here three times trying to fix it. They said they replaced everything that could be replaced but couldn't fix the problem. Scott said he could disconnect the igniters, and I could manually light the burners. I told John about that. Within minutes, he asked me if I had matches. He unplugged them. Done!

 John cooked rice for dinner. He didn't want to use my hot pot and insisted he preferred cooking rice on the stovetop. It came out crunchy. I hadn't warned him that our stove runs hotter than most.   

  The weather bureau warned that high winds blowing in a cold front were arriving this evening. So far, we've been fortunate; severe weather hasn't hit our island. A hurricane hit Kauai once. So far, so good for the Big Island, but with climate change, anything is possible. While we have some rain, we're in a drought now.   ht a package of precooked stuffed turkey breast with sauce. He had two. I bought one from him for Thanksgiving dinner for my guests and me.   

When Carol and Christine saw the size of those two pies, they laughed. The pies were ridiculously large for four people who weren't into gorging.