Wednesday, January 24, 2024

 Wednesday, January 24, 2024 

 

    I was up by 5, completed my online Gentle Seated yoga exercise following a YouTube video, and completed 4,000 steps for my morning walk. I followed all that with Yvette's driveway yoga at 7 am. Yvette only did 45 minutes instead of the full hour because I wanted to leave to make it to the old folks' mahjong meeting at church, which was supposed to start at 8 am. When I arrived, the door to the parish center was locked, and no one was there. I texted Paulette to let her know. I figured she had known, but no. As I headed back to the parking lot, there she was. She had no idea it had been canceled. Fr. Lio announced it at Sunday mass. Kathy, the main organizer, had been incapacitated because of knee surgery. She thought people would meet without her. Everyone thought Kathy supplied the mahjong sets. We found out there were sets in the parish office.

    Since I had free time, I took care of some chores. I went to the police station to get fingerprinted for my security check for the church for my work at Ulu Wini. I only got instructions: make an appointment and have a cashier's check for $25. I went back to town to go to the bank to deposit a check and get the cashier's check. The bank charged me $10 for it.

  Once I had the check, I called the church to get their OR number. "A what? We don't have an OR number." I told them I was informed I would need a security check. In every job I've had in education, I needed an FBI report. The church has its own system for checking people, Virtus. I was stuck with a $25 cashier's check made out to the police department I couldn't use. Nothing worse should happen. I went home for a nap.

   I saw third-grade S today, who didn't know the alphabet when I started with him and was considered a total non-reader. Wow! He must have had some knowledge already; otherwise, this is just magic. He had a log jam in his brain. Now that that's removed, he's learning swiftly. Anything could be responsible for that. I have thirty years of experience with my methods and many such experiences to suggest that it may have been what I did. I remember his rapt attention as I made the phonemic sounds of a word. I didn't just make phonemic sounds in isolation as they do in phonics training. I made them in the context of a word- any word.

   It was clear that second-grade T was terrified. Did her teacher yell at her? Yes. I assured her I wouldn't yell at her, but I can sympathize with the teacher. Several of the children are paralyzed by fear. That fear is an accusation. It tells the teacher or parent, in the case of one child, they're a terrible person who frightens children. I don't know anyone comfortable with that. That level of fear is annoying and triggers fear and anger in the 'accused.' T hugged me at the end of the session.

    I had D work on letter naming in the text. He knows the letters of the alphabet and can name them rapidly. The purpose of this exercise is to enhance rapid letter perception. He often misreads words because he ignores most of the letters. For the exercise,  I read letters in one sentence; he does in the second. We continue taking turns.

   He argues reading the letters doesn't help; working on the sight word list helped. He only believes in automatic recall but thinks it should happen automatically. He doesn't think he should have to work for it. He may not know that automatic recall is my goal for him, too. We disagree on how to achieve it. He thinks it just happens. He has to make an effort, study. I have also given him an explanation of the relationship between automatic recall and studying. He doesn't buy it. 

   While there are sight word lists. In the Fry list, words are listed in the order of their frequency of appearance in text. Many teachers believe the words are phonically irregular. Some are; most aren't. All the words are partially phonetically regular.

    More significantly, we read most words by sight; we do not consciously figure out the words. Competent readers have embedded most of the words they read in memory and retrieve them automatically. Memory isn't just of the whole word; memory includes memory for common letter sets, like -at, -it, -ane, and ine. They are elements of many words. What needs to be clarified is how much of the automatic processing includes rapid decoding in alphabetic languages in the unconscious mind. Relying on memory does not mean just memorizing an image.

   It was pouring at night. No walking, I didn't make my 10000 steps.