Tuesday, April 2, 2024

 Tuesday, April 2, 2024  

      I met with first-grade B again today. I planned to work on her psychological need to have everything her way. We all want everything our way, all of us. Adapting to life’s realities is the key to a successful life, one with any contentment. After thinking about it for a good part of the day, I approached the problem as an issue of attention instead of self-centeredness. I used the slow, thick line method.   I started by asking her how she felt when she had to pay attention to the letters. She said, “Bad.”

   I developed the slow line method with a boy with emotional problems who had trouble paying attention. It came to me as many solutions come to me- out of the blue. I told him to follow the line I drew as I moved my pen across the paper. I moved the pen slowly and erratically across the paper. I didn’t know where the line was going to go. I followed my impulse. Miraculously, many of the boy’s emotional and attention problems cleared up. I asked him if his mother saw the difference. He said, “Yes.’ I asked him what she said. “Holy cow!”   I’ve used the slow-line method with other students to teach letter formation and drill sight words.

   First-grade B did a good job following the line. I asked her if she found it interesting. Yes. I said that’s what you do as you read the letters; you wonder what the next one will be. I had her reading third-grade material from a Barnell-Loft book. I chose that because she had read all the first-grade material I had in school. She remembered the stories and rewrote it rather than words on the page. On the unfamiliar third-grade material, she had to concentrate. She did very well until the end of the session. I think she was tired and lapsed back into a less focused mode. That confirmed she had a problem with attention more than reading.