Wednesday, May 31, 2023

 Wednesday, May 31, 2023

   

     I heard from Judy later in the evening. Paulette was borderline septic and would have to stay in the hospital for three days. It was not a flu.   

When I walked Elsa this morning, she only produced a bit, several small bits. When I got home, I found several more small bits on the lanai carpet.

I met with Mama K's crew this morning at 8:30. She said Monday and Wednesday would work for her; she would be home. I convinced her to try Fridays, too, but it would mean counting on the kids to sign in on their own.

I started with fourth-grade K. I asked him how he felt about our work. Boring. Boring could mean anything: too easy, too hard, not an interesting topic, tired, would prefer to play video games, etc. The word boring gives a limited amount of information. We worked on a passage requiring him to retell what he knew and compare ravioli with pierogi. He said that it wasn't boring because he had to think. That's who I thought this kid was years ago. He may like to think, but it only sometimes gets good results. What's going on? Where is he going wrong? Or is he overthinking for his grade level? If true, he will develop his mental style as he ages.

I started working on third-grade material with Twin A. She needs help to do this. We will reread this piece a little at a time and then repeatedly. We are working on decoding multi-syllable words. She rose to the challenge. She works hard and applies what I teach her. 

While Twin A worked on third-grade material, Twin E struggled at a first-grade level. She reread a passage we had read before. She did well up to a point and then collapsed. I wondered if she collapsed because she got tired or because we hit the part of the story we hadn't read before. Even if the latter is the case, her recall of the first 4/5 of the passage was good. It shows some improvement in her memory. We will work on that passage again in our next session.  

As usual, Adolescent D had done nothing on his own. He hadn't cracked the Driver's Manual. I made it clear to him that while there were only 30 questions on the test, that was out of 177 possible questions that could be on the test. At this rate, he would be thirty when he was ready to take the test. It is his perfectionism that has put him in this spot. He refuses to do anything he can't do well immediately. Good luck! 

There was good news. Today, D remembered the rule that c is pronounced as an /s/ when it comes before an e, i, or y. This is the first time he got it. I nearly wept.

His mom also told me he jumped a whole grade level in his reading from 5th grade to sixth grade. That means he jumped from a first—or second-grade level to the fifth in our first year. He made amazing progress, mostly through my effort. Think of how much better he would be if he did some work independently. 

Steven's mother called to talk about his progress. He was still fighting working with the sight word drill cards but did fine reading the words in context. Steven has problems doing what he doesn't want to do. He is very bright and will be ahead of everyone else once he gets rolling. Steven is currently doing fourth-grade math in Kindergarten. He also can talk for a good ten minutes about the planets in an organized and sophisticated way.

Mike's niece called. She and her son visited me last year around this time. Besides catching up, I asked her if she could help me with ChatGBT. Damon sent me a Mother's Day poem written by the AI program. It was trite and didn't always make sense, but it was sweet.  

She met me in a Zoom session to show me how to use the program. I asked it to contrast reading teaching methods; phonics, whole language, and phoneme /grapheme instruction. It did a pretty good job. It didn't cover all my thoughts, but it's a good start.

Shivani has done a lot of writing. She instructed ChapGBT to write in her voice. It sounded something like her, but it was terrible. Cylin, who is a published writer, did the same thing. She said it sounded like her writing from years ago.

I checked my YouTube, The Phonics Discovery System channel, and videos. Nothing. They were not on YouTube- not a trace. My numbers had been relatively good- for a poor little non-celebrity video: Phase I -415, Phase II- 130, The Five Stories – 276, and 18 subscribers. It's all gone. Oh, dear. I didn't panic; that was pretty good for me. I would figure it out the next day. When Scott walked in, I told him what happened. He said he would help me tomorrow.