Friday, March 28, 2025

 Friday, March 28, 2025 

    I finished trimming the last stretch of the plumbago with the hedge trimmer.  I would have to return and finish weeding that section of the pathway between the shrub and my neighbor's fence.  After watering the 42 shrubs I had planted in December and trimmed recently to ensure they would grow wide instead of tall, I pulled up the yellow flowers that had replanted around one of the shrubs. That one wasn't doing so well.  It had leaves on it when I trimmed it back.  Yesterday, I thought I saw some leaves come up at the base of the remaining stalk, but it doesn't look good.  It may be my one failure.

    I have a reputation as the lady with the black thumb. Things that grow wild for others won't grow or die on me, even if I have someone else plant them.  These shrubs are a victory for me, even if one is dead.  I still brought 41 of them through.  This is an amazing accomplishment for me. the key is to water new plantings daily. Who knew?

    I had the Twins at 3:15.  The bus has been running late. I confronted Twin A today on her attitude.  Mama K told me she was balking because she was working with me on a 5th-grade level and decided she didn't need my help anymore.  In teaching reading, we distinguish between an instructional and independent reading level.  Twin A is on an instructional 5th-grade level. Independently, she is still at the 4th grade level. That means she will be two years behind her grade level when she enters sixth-grade.  Her comprehension is pretty good, but she makes no effort when reading multisyllabic words. I told her if she didn't do that, she wouldn't progress. I asked her if she was interested in being a good reader. On a rate of 1-10, she gave that a 5. Then, I asked if she was interested in being a good student. On a rate of 1-10, she gave that an 8.  I told her she had to make a decision to make an effort to pay attention to the words.

    Twin E said she wanted to work on writing. I opened her writing folder. I saw a rough draft of the Coconut Beach story. I thought we had done more with it.  I worked on correcting it with her using Grammarly.  After the session, I discovered we had a polished draft.  I used that one. 

   I had my daily phone call with my friend Jean. I gave her exercises that I hoped might help her.  She's been suffering from sciatica. She complains of pain daily.  It varies between bad and agonizing. 

   I told her to think of the hips and the rib cage as two boxes. They should sit on top of each other. The ribs shouldn't tilt forward.  Most people, when told to stand straight, throw their shoulders back.  Unfortunately, that usually results in tilting the ribs forward and putting more pressure on the lower back.  I learned how to do it correctly through the Gokhale program.  Hold the ribs firmly in place and pull the shoulders back.  You should feel a stretch across the front between the shoulders. That's where it's tight. Then, lower the chin as close to the top of the chest as possible.  Pull the head erect from that position, starting with the neck's bottom. Then, we did our daily water meditation. As we finished it, I could feel her back was better. I asked her if I was right. Yes, it was. I said the problem was on the right side of her lower back.  She said the pain was on the left. That made sense. The pain is on the opposite side of the injury.

    At the end of the day, I had fifth-grade GV. He told me he saw ZN in his class on Friday. ZN told him what I had shown him had helped already. GV said that as ZN was reading, he kept drawing his arm across his chest from his left shoulder to his right. ZN was using the cross-body blending technique I showed him. How great is that?!

   I opened a sixth-grade reading comprehension exercise for GV. He struggled with the multi-syllable words and was asked to drop back to the fifth-grade level.  We didn't get far. He encountered the word concentrated.   He faltered. "Read the word one syllable at a time." I don't know how many times I say that to students.  I should have a repeat play button. 

   While he could identify all the syllables, he ran into two problems. First, he could blend them and maintain the sound of the syllables he had identified. The second problem was his intolerance for unfamiliarity and uncertainty. I had him use a backward build-up to blend the sounds.  He had trouble blending cent and rated. Those three syllables blended made no sense.  GV is very uncomfortable when things don't make sense. The problem is everything new doesn't make sense. The tolerance for the unknown makes the difference between a good learner and a poor one.  GV couldn't even hold the sound of the blended form of the last three syllables: centrated.  Then, I helped him add on the first syllable.  He wound up with con/cent/ra/ted. The pronunciation was accurate, but not the correct one.  He couldn't hear the word.  I wondered if he didn't know it. When I told him what it was, he held his head.  I told him he suffered from brain freeze.  It was a fear response. I explained it wasn't my style. I was a fighter. It had its own drawbacks.  

   Then, I felt his mind go into learning mode.  I told him to just be still and watch it.  You don't want to interrupt it when it gets started.  I had a vision of a brick wall crumbling.  I told him. He said he had the image of a block of ice melting and revealing the word.  This could be huge. 

   Jean had proposed we do more bodywork at the end of the day, but she didn't call.  I called her. She was already in bed. She had a pillow ready to place under her legs if she lay on her back or between her legs if on her side. Sadly, neither the doctor nor her PT recommended this simple modification to remove the strain from the lower back. While she was too tired to do more work, she still felt better.