Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Wednesday, December 25, 2024

 

  Merry Christmas to one and all.   

   Joseph went to Mass yesterday afternoon and planned to attend the 9 a.m. mass today.  He said the masses yesterday were jammed. There were over 1,000 people. Every seat in the church and in the Grace Center was filled. The parking lot was impossible. Joseph and I went in his car in anticipation of another crazy day. We left early.  Attendance was in the normal range today. The church and the lanai were moderately full, and the Grace Center was empty. Most people came yesterday and stayed home today to open presents on Christmas morning.

   We were at church early for me, by 8:30, for the 9 a.m. mass. It worked out great. Women from the Hula ministry were on the south lanai waiting to perform. Had I arrived at my usual time, not only would I have missed visiting with them, but I would also have missed the performances.

  Aya was one of the dancers. I saw her at the Mary’s Tea event. I hadn’t seen her for six years when she was 13.  Her dad took Mike and me out for dinner at least once a year. He brought his two daughters along.  Aya was in college and is now majoring in philosophy and health science.  We talked casually and discovered we were both philosophically oriented.  We wound up having a lot in common. She said she was interested in continuing our conversation.  She texted me later to wish me Merry Christmas and said she had enjoyed our conversation. I had been down. Our enthusiastic conversation lifted my spirits.

    I have been happy to be home alone for the last five Christmases. I rejected invitations for Thanksgiving and Christmas because I was concerned about Covid. I also felt being in company would be harder than being alone. But this year, it was different. I wanted to be with someone, but I had no invitations.  I asked Joseph about his plans. His brother lived in town. Was he spending Christmas with them?  He said his brother’s fiancé said hMonday, December 23, 2024

 

   One of my friends is someone who indulges in 'emotional farting," as distinguished from "emotional dumping."  I'll leave what they're dumping to your imagination.  He knows he's cantankerous. He is, sometimes annoyingly so, but he's never mean to the people he's with.  He can be frustrating as he makes an illogical statement. He often expresses ideas and values that make sense. And then, every so often, he makes ridiculous statements or claims. When he does, I question his logic. He fesses up. The guy sees himself in negative terms, much more so than is necessary.  He has a right to his opinions and complaints.  He feels he doesn't.

   I believe that most of the 'evil' done in the world is done by people who feel inferior or victimized. I suppose we are all victims at some point or another. I'm not referring to those horrific situations when terrible things happen. I'm referring to people who see themselves as life's victims in situations where they are clearly not. Some are social victims, unable to set boundaries and think others are rude and inconsiderate when made uncomfortable. Some people with a version of the Oprah syndrome have a great deal and either feel it's never enough or feel more entitled.  I think people with an exaggerated sense of entitlement are coming from a position of inferiority.

   Here's an extreme case.  In the middle of the financial collapse of 2008, leaders of the financial industry were 'asked' to accept reduced salaries. The federal official who informed these people expected to hear they were upset about having to cut back on luxuries. They would have to sell one of their 5 million dollar homes or give up a yacht.  But those weren't the complaints. These men complained that they were men with 5

million-dollar in salaries, and they couldn't be reduced to million-dollar salaries. They were devastated.  My friend owns his inferiority complex. It prevents him from doing serious damage to those around him.

    I purchased a computer light, one of those gadgets you use to illuminate your face to make you look good in a video. Two minutes with that light, and my left eye was in pain. It's this harsh fluorescent light. What is my alternative? I guess just looking old and haggard.

   Writing about each session is getting complicated. So much happens.  I've switched my approach from teaching decoding to teaching spelling as a way to teach reading and writing simultaneously.  I select material that seems appropriate for the student's level and dictate phrases, clauses, or complete sentences. This approach requires a panoply of skills from the students.

    For starters, they have to remember the words in sequence. Good Lord, there are so many skills involved in this simple act.  I modify the level of the material and the number of words dictated at one time depending on the student's ability level. They should never feel overwhelmed or unsupported.  It is vital that they feel challenged as much as they do when playing a video game. While this way of teaching is novel in one sense, it is also very old. It engages all the senses, as Fernald advised in the 1920s. The students were involved in this activity. The activity should be fun. It doesn't have to be as much fun as their favorite video game. If the video game is a 10 out of 10, this activity should be at least a 5. If it's not, I have to modify the activity.  For students who have difficulty with auditory recall, I either have to teach them how to do that or change the activity to eliminate the need to remember a long sequence of words.

    The student spells each word in order. If they don't have a visual memory of how to spell the word, they spell it the best they can, using the sounds. As we all know, English spelling is tricky, particularly the spelling of vowel sounds. Besides there being a choice of how to spell a sound, vowel sounds in unstressed syllables often sound the same; they all sound like the short u or short i. There are two u sounds in the English language. They sound similar, but they are not. There's the tense u as in hut, and the relaxed /u/ as at the end of banana or the indefinite article a.  If a speaker uses the tense /u/ where he should use the relaxed one, he will sound like he has an accent. No native speaker would make that mistake.  In a three-syllable word, two vowels will be reduced to the relaxed /u/.  You can't figure out how to spell them from the sound.  In the word animal, the I and the second a are both some form of the schwa, the formal name of the relax u.  In the word elephant, the second e is the relaxed /u/, and the a is a relaxed /e/ or /i/. 

   There are approaches to teaching phonics that aim to reduce the confusion. The complexity of English orthography is real. You can't magically wish it away.  I've discovered several situations where students have learned to expect consistency from the English spelling system and don't know how to deal with the complexity.  They feel like failures because they have been taught it's simple and obvious, and that doesn't work for them. The first thing I have to do is disabuse them of that notion. Once they see it's not a failure on their part, but they were given the wrong information, their reading problem clears up quickly. Their expectations adjust. And they start exploring what is instead of what they've been taught it is. That switch in perspective from top-down to bottom-up perception may be the key.  You have to use bottom-up perception to perceive the phonemes in a word as they are. You can perceive patterns when you deal with what is instead of what it 'should be.' Phonics teaches patterns; but no phonics program teaches all the varied patterns of English orthography. Figuring out which pattern is used to spell a word is a combination of statistical likelihood and visual recall. Figuring out the sound of a word when reading is a combination of decoding, memory, and inferring meaning from context.  There is no way to arrive at an accurate sound of a word just from phonetic analysis.

   If the student spells the word using phonemic awareness and statistical likelihood, they are still unlikely to spell a word 100% correctly. I push them to do it anyway, assuring them it's okay. Spelling can always be corrected. It is more important that we write to express our thoughts accurately on paper. Someone can figure out if the spelling accurately reflects the sounds of the words. Here, students incorporate invented spelling.

    Invented spelling was big at one point. Teachers used it exclusively. Children became good writers, but it didn't help them learn to read. We need both. If a child misspells a word, I go over it to show them what they got right as well as what's wrong and wrong. Both are important. When children are taught spelling, they are not usually trained to analyze their writing for what worked and what didn't.  I do that with them. In the process, I cover mini lessons in phonics, spelling, and morphology- throwing in comprehension for good measure.  When dictating a whole paragraph, one phrase, clause, or sentence at a time, the students reread what they have written before going on to the following words. Knowing the passage's context helps predict the meaning of the following words. If a student makes an error in this regard, it provides an opportunity to discuss comprehension skills.

   I love this approach. It is a fantastic diagnostic and teaching tool.   The students' misunderstandings and downright problems are revealed with clarity that I have not experienced with any other approach. 

   When students misspell a word, The first step is to show them what they got correct and what is correct enough so someone can figure out what they were trying to say. The next step is to help them arrive at the correct spelling.  For example, if a student spells animal as anamul, I show them what they got right the an m-l. The spelling of the two vowel letters must be memorized.

  When correcting spelling, first,  I ask them to identify the number of syllables in the word. Second, they must make sure there is a vowel letter in every syllable. (There are words where there is no vowel letter to represent the sound. More frequently, there are vowel letters that are 'silent.') Since statistically, there is a vowel letter for every syllable, I push them to check if they have produced a vowel letter for every syllable. (there are a few cases in English where we don't use a vowel letter to represent the vowel sound.  there are also a few cases where we argue there is a vowel sound where there isn't one, but those  are the exceptions.) In invented spelling, students will often only write the consonants, as CN for CAN. Second,  I encourage them to see if they can dredge up the correct spelling from the visual memory once they know what's wrong. If that doesn't help, I will give them examples from other words. For example, suppose a student spells elephant as elefant. In that case, I will provide the word phone as an example, allowing them to figure it out and implicitly teach them to search for patterns in words they are more familiar with. Finally, I tell them  The students are engaged. The trick is to keep the activity in their comfort range.

  Today, I worked with Seventh grade RH on ratio proportion. I haven't done that math in years, sixty-perhaps.  I had some recollection, but not enough to present a clear picture.  I had to look it up.  I did remember that you could compare two parts of a whole or a part in relation to a whole.  I worked on the part to the whole. If the relationship was a 1:3, what was the other number if the first was a 2? She struggled with it. Then she saw it. It was one of those OH! Moments.

   I asked her if she felt embarrassed when she saw it because it was obvious. She said yes. RH is self-conscious and hard on herself. I asked her if she heard other students express that surprise and the accompanying wonder when they 'get it.' Then they wonder how could they be so stupid not to have seen it. She said yes. That's what good students do. I have to give her the lesson on how 'everything's obvious once you see it.'

   I learned that lesson from a story about Christopher Columbus.  When appealing to the court of Queen Isabella for funds for his expedition to find India, he presented them with a challenge.  He challenged them to stand a hard-boiled egg on its end.  No one could do it. Then he showed them how. He tapped the end of an egg on the table, cracking the shell and creating a stable base. Everyone said, "That's obvious." Columbus said, "Everything is obvious once you've seen it." my sister said seeing the obvious is a sign of genius.

   Her hyper-self-critical stance interferes with her learning more than anything else I've seen so far. Once that's out of the way, we'll figure out what's left. Maybe she does have a learning disability, as diagnosed by the educational consultant. Her mother paid a small fortune for the diagnosis.