Thursday, March 27, 2025

 Thursday, March 27, 2025

    Wow!  I sleep well. I started bedtime preparations around 9 pm.  I took all my pills, two prescribed and the rest for good luck.  Chemistry not being my thing, I don't know if they're doing me any good. I figure if I take them for my benefit, they will have a positive impact on my well-being.

     I was less tired than I usually am on my morning walk.  The evening walk was always easier. I had no idea why. I stopped doing my morning exercise routine before the walk, figuring it drained my energy.  Eh! It's often only a little better when I do it right after getting out of bed.  The evening walk is always better.

   I finished trimming the plumbagos with the hedge trimmer. There'll be more to do.  I still have to weed the path between the hedge and the fence in the section I just whacked this morning. I did some incidental trimming as I  went along. These shrubs are contestants for objects with magical properties in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. I could go out there and trim them daily.

   Darby and I saw a woman living in a house on Holoholo we'd never seen before. We asked if she planned to plant fruit trees in the area she recently fenced in. Yes. plumbago.  I said, "Don't do it," and warned her of their enthusiastic growth.  She had already planted them.  She'd see.

     My phone rang as I was kneeling, weeding the wandering coral plant growing through a low-lying, slow-growing bush. (Yeah, we have one or two of those here: slow-growing plants .)  

   The call was from Shelly. I thought we had a 10 am appointment; it was only 8 am. I reported I was in good shape. Rob is having a positive effect. It's a relief to have a therapist besides Shelly. He's interested without being overly impressed or convinced I'm a total mess or my parents verge on evil. It is so good to have someone relate to me in a manner I'm comfortable with. It's interesting to observe the impact of his response to me.  Finally, a therapist who I don't feel is laying a trip on me. This change will result in my seeing Shelly less frequently, for starters. That would be nice.  I would hate to lose her completely, but seeing her every other week or once a month sounds good.

   I had fourth-grade LG at 4:30.  I had him pick a title for the last piece of writing so I could send it to his mom to print. While his mom and dad both express appreciation for how I've helped LG, they don't know how to give him the positive feedback I think would be helpful. They don't print his stories. I think they read them, but they don't give him positive feedback.

    After we nailed a title for his story, I pulled up a fourth-grade reading comprehension exercise from IXL.  He came across a word that started with ea.  He misread the word by a country mile. I asked him what sound the ea might represent.  I think I said the long i.  OW! I asked him to think of the most likely sound.  I reminded him, "When two vowels go walking, the first does the talking." He couldn't apply the saying to the situation at hand.  His mind was blank. Nothing made sense; nothing connected.  LG's biggest problem is how his mind goes blank when uncertain about an answer. It's driven by pure terror. Through polyvagal theory, I'm learning it's the unmyelinated vagal nerve that drives that response. It is the most primitive of fear responses and challenging to overcome.  Several students respond this way to new or old material that isn't immediately recalled.

   I talked to LG about this response. He doesn't know why he acts this way, but he agreed that it was an undesirable response and that he wanted to change. I understood that he didn't know how to remedy the situation. He understood I wasn't angry with him for responding that way and was committed to finding a way out. Hopefully, I can help him.

   At 5:15, I had my first appointment with fifth-grade ZN. He's the kid who heard about my work from a classmate I tutored and asked his mother to hire me.  This is a first. I started our first session as I do with all my students. "Tell me about something you're interested in or do well."  Our relationship is one where I'm the expert, and he's the failure; I'm the adult, and he's the child.  I want the child to know that I see him as more than his failure. ZN told me about his interest in marine biology. His mother told me he wanted to be a marine biologist. That's why he's so interested in learning to read.  ZN told me he wants to invent a machine that will clean all the garbage out of the ocean.  He doesn't think small, does he?

   After that, I started on the reading lessons.  I asked him to spell his name and modeled the syllables, individual sounds, and phonemes.  Z is the first letter and the first sound in his name. He had trouble pronouncing it in isolation.  I asked him if he would pronounce the /s/ sound. He could, and without my saying anything further, he pronounced the /z/.  Wow!  To those of you who easily make both sounds, you're thinking, what's the big deal? But it is a big deal if he has trouble.  The /s/ and /z/ sounds have the same articulation. That means the tongue is placed against the ridge right behind the teeth: alveolar-labial articulation.  While the /z/ uses the same position, it sounds different. What makes that difference?  It's called voicing.  The /s/ is voiceless, and the /z/ is voiced.  A speech sound (a phoneme) is voiced if the vocal chords vibrate. When pronouncing /s/, they don't vibrate. When pronouncing /z/, they do.  Place your hand on your throat and make both of those sounds. You'll feel the difference.  There are other pairs of sounds distinguished by their voicing: p/b, t/d, k/g,  and f/v are some of them.  He responded so quickly that he surprised me. 

   I pulled up the first of the Carpenter stories. It's at a kindergarten level.

 

Sassy the Cat

Th-e-re     w-a-s    a       b-l-a-ck      c-a-t.      Th-e      c-a-t        w-a-s   S-a-s/s-y   th-e      c-a-t.   S-a-s/s-y      

w-a-s       b-l-a-ck       a-n-d     v-e/r-y   f-a-t.  H-e       s-a-t       a-n-d       s-a-t        o-n       h-i-s       

m-a-t.        A    b-l-a-ck      r-a-t       w-e-n-t      b-y    S-a-s/s-y      th-e       c-a-t.     I-t    w-e-n-t   i-n       a        

h-a-t.      S-a-s/s-y       th-e       c-a-t      w-e-n-t      t-o       th-e       h-a-t.      H-e   a-te      th-e        b-l-a-ck        

r-a-t.        H-i- s      l-a-p         g-o-t         v-e/r-y    f-a-t.        H-i-s    t-ai-l,   w-e-n-t     t-a-p,   t-a-p,       t-a-p.

 

   I started 'reading' the passage by making the identified sounds before saying the words. ZN said he could read it.  I let him. He was halting but read most of the words until he hit the word fat.  I can't remember what he said; it was close to /fet/. I highlighted the -at and asked him if he could read that, and he read it correctly. "Just add the /f/ in front of it."  He said, "frat."  He couldn't delete the /r/.  I taught him crossbody blending. 

    Using his right arm, he was to touch his left shoulder and say /f/. Then he touched his right shoulder, saying 'at.'  Without my saying a word, he blended the sounds correctly. As he continued reading the passage, he used the crossbody blending technique without my having to say a word.  He must have used it half a dozen times as he completed the passage.  I have never had such a responsive student in my life.  He is so eager to learn and so quick to get the point.  Amazing!  Given his word recognition problems, I have no idea how he even scored on a second-grade reading level.  I am very optimistic he will be at a secure third-grade level by the end of the school year.  In my heart of hearts, I'm hoping he will show a year's growth in a month. What fun!