Thursday, April 4, 2024

 Thursday, April 4, 2024

    I saw a dark spot on the lanai carpet in the dark when I got up at 5 a.m. I hoped it was a shadow, but no. Elsa had peed on the carpet. She hadn’t done that in a while. Why was she starting it again? I have seen her go out the doggie door independently, but  I have to give her the sink-eye and order her out. I think she hates how the flap feels when she pushes it open.

   I did more weeding in the mulched area where the Ficus trees were extracted. Only a few more were coming up from seeds. The soil was still wet from the rain, and they were easy to pull out by the roots.

   I got the lawnmower out and mowed the strip of grass along the street. I also mowed the neighbor’s strip in front of their empty lot. Darby loves the way the groomed strip looks. She can see it from her driveway.

  Yesterday, when I called the extension center, they couldn’t tell me if there were any long-term effects of using boiling water to weed. I called the master gardeners who work for the extension. I was told with complete confidence that boiling water would not do any long-term damage to the soil. Yes, it would knock out some microbes, but they would be replenished within two days.

  Today was a Ulu Wini day. I worked with four children. Fourth-grade BE has good word recognition skills. We worked on comprehension. She was missing the before/after concept with time.

 I had met with 1st grade J once before. We worked on memory problems then, We continued with that today using the first 25 words of the Fry Sight Word List. She was still struggling.

   When I worked with third-grade AR, I got a nasty surprise. I hadn’t worked with her in a while. Last week, she joined a group of girls as we worked on comprehension of The Hatchet. She was easily distracted. I guessed she had trouble understanding the complex language and planned to work with her on compression. What I discovered today was a big surprise. Her English is very limited. I should find out when she moved here from the Marshal Islands. This information will help me determine how much of her problem is caused by a lack of exposure to English versus an auditory processing problem. I also discovered her word recognition skills were poor. I did manage to take her through the WbyW process with some of the sentences. It should be interesting to see if it impacted her understanding of what people say.

   The Marshal Islands comprise 29 coral atolls and five islands with a population of 70,000. There are islands with only a few people living on them. There is no need for complex language structures and an extensive vocabulary. You know everything there is to know by the time you’re five. Language is formulaic. These people aren’t linguistically limited because they’re stupid; there is no need for complex language. To say they’re like a fish out of water here in the States would be an understatement. I grieve with them for the loss of their simple life. Loneliness and despair are diseases of the industrialized nations. Yes, we are more ‘advanced.’ I put that in quotes because our destruction is built into our advancement. We may live longer, but we’re not happier or more fulfilled. We‘ve turned ourselves into zoo animals, living lives sheltered from physical danger in worlds we are unsuited for.

   I worked with third-grade BR for the first time. She read slowly. 

i concluded she was consciously decoding every word. I showed her how to use her automatic system. She proved to be an excellent student. She got to work practicing on her own in the session. So far, she is the only student who initiated intentional learning. She should go far in the educational system. Hopefully, the world won’t disappoint her.