Thursday, October 24, 2024

Thursday, October 24, 2024 

 

  I was up by 4:30 a.m. Before I wash myself and brush my teeth in the morning, my first chore is checking Elsa's skin. It looks good. I spend my time brushing her instead. She only tolerates one side at a time. She looks like she enjoys it, and then she's done.

   Elsa's improvement is fantastic.  It's all due to the recommendations of the groomer at Petco. The vet gave me a prescription soap to use every other day, leaving the soap on for ten minutes each time.  The groomer said, "Good God, no. Only bathe her once a week." Also, don't rinse off all the conditioner. Her skin was already much better after the bath before the one I gave her this Monday.  Most of her body was free of lesions except in the groin.  On Monday, I slathered the conditioner in the groin area and did a light rinsing. Bingo! I saw an immediate improvement in those lesions. We're done with the steroids and antibiotics.  Maybe we'll be done with the prescription soap bathes and the prescription food that not only costs me a fortune but I have to ship to my sister on the mainland so she can mail it to me for a mere $30.  If I had it shipped directly from the company, it would cost me $80.

   I was tired after my walk after getting up and 4:30 and working on my document showing how my methods are evidence-based.  My methods are more evidence-based than the programs developed and researched by the publishing houses. They aim to develop a product the schools can buy for another 100,000 dollars plus. While these new programs provide more phonics instruction than the old whole language approach, they are still insufficient for many children.  The most researched and highly regarded program for teaching phonics, the  Orton-Gillingham program, is impractical to use in a classroom.  It's a lesson a day for each school day for three years.  If a student is absent, they miss the lesson. The program is not adaptable to different levels within the classroom. Everyone in a group gets the same lesson, whether they need it or not. 

    My program requires no new materials; any printed matter can be used. In my first lesson with Adolescent D, I offered him third-grade material, fifth-grade material, or an adult book on philosophy. Guess what he chose! So, I pulled a sentence out of this book on Spinoza. It was an ordinary sentence, well within his reach, and I didn't bruise his adolescent ego. 

       If I teach a group, I select a sentence with words that address the needs of the most advanced student. Every complete sentence contains words at a low level.

       I made it to Ulu Wini.   No one approached me. I nailed second-grade NV. The last time I worked with her, I discovered she had memory problems. Efforts made to correct her brain pattern failed.  She was uncomfortable with a spin release, which would allow her to use her visual working memory in the area of the forehead instead of having it slip to the top on the left.  She said there had been no change since I had worked with her last.  My notes say she couldn't even recognize the word OF. She said it was THE. Today, she decoded GOT and recognized WAS. I guided her through a phonemic analysis of Sassy the Cat. She was attentive and responsive. She worked hard. I released her after one paragraph.

       Next, I nailed third-grade PL. She was going to the bathroom when I persuaded her to work with me. She said she saw improvement in her reading. I went over the Fry #1-25 Sight Word list. She named the letters before she said the word. She still had problems reading AT as THAT.  She didn't read the words as rapidly as I would like. She was done after reading the first twenty-five words. She is the one true ADD student I have.  She can't stay on task for a minute.

        None of the other elementary school children wanted to work with me. I sat and wrote, waiting for the middle school bus to arrive. Sixth-grade ML came over immediately. Sixth-grade RM joined, as did a new girl, ninth-grade AY, an Americanized version of her Marshallese name.  I worked on line-by-line comprehension in Esperanza Rising. ML worked hard. AY was new to the group. She did pretty well.  RM was her usual distracted self. She doesn't even respond when I call her name. It's as if she's asleep. There's something wrong. AY and RM got up and walked away, and I continued working with ML. She finds the work fun. She's a delight.

         I had a session with fourth-grade LG today. I worked on handwriting. I noticed he formed all his numbers and letters from the bottom up instead of the top down. I had him copy my actions with his index finger on a textured surface. After a few minutes of instruction, he could make that change and formed the letters beautifully. The change was spectacular. 

       In our math work, I  presented him with a challenge today.  I asked him to write the equations for a four-by-three array, first as three groups and then as four. He did a perfect job.  He got it. We'll see how much carry-over there is to other situations. I checked his understanding of expanded notation. He had that.  

        Darby called to say her friend, who had been lingering in hospice for a month, finally died. She wanted to walk with me and talk.