November 15, 2013

1.  We played again The Allowance Game. This time Robert was the first to get $20 and he won.   Yesterday, we made Robert a banker who takes and gives money to all the players.  That arrangement confused Robert a lot leading him to giving others his money or taking other players money for himself.  Today, every player was his/her own banker.  It went smoothly.  He had no difficulties assembling almost mechanically small amount of money: $.45, $1.80, or $1.30.

2. We continued working on paraphrasing section of the Language Elementary  from Linguisystems. A few years ago, Robert and I went through a few first pages of many sections of the book. Now we do almost all exercises although some are difficult for Robert.  Matching synonyms wasn’t a problem, but choosing two out of three short, simple sentences with the same meaning was. Only one word was different in each sentence, so it shouldn’t be difficult to just match the sentences containing two synonyms. But it was. I am not sure why.  It might be because Robert has never before had to match sentences.  It might be because two of the sentences had synonyms, while the third one had an antonym. Robert might get distracted and not be sure if he should match opposites or synonyms.

3. We did exercises in writing.  The first was about the kitchen.  First, Robert had to complete two word- webs.  One for Things in the Kitchen and one for What we do in the kitchen. After he did that, he wrote a short paragraph about our kitchen based on the words taken from those two webs. In a second writing exercise, he wrote a few sentences about The Allowance Game.  He wrote with whom he played and that he won.  He also wrote a little about the rules of the game explaining when a player gets more money and when he/she looses them.

4. He practiced division with a reminder and changing improper fractions to mixed fractions which of course also requires division with remainder.

5. I wrote a few subtraction problems with different units requiring regrouping. Two problems to subtract hours and minutes, two to subtract feet and inches and the last two to subtract pounds and ounces.  A few times in the past Robert subtracted hours and minutes and feet and inches.  Pounds and ounces were fairly new.  The only prompt I gave Robert was to ask him, “How many ounces in one pound.”  After he answered this question without any hesitation he solved the last two problems. I was really proud.  He demonstrated ability to use the same method for different  units of measurements. As I said, I was proud.  Robert not really.  I don’t think he even noticed that he did something we had not practiced before.

There are errors in teaching that easily go under the radar.  They cause a great confusion on part of the learners and yet the instructor hardly notices that it was he/she who has sent baffling directions.

A few times in the past, Robert was asked to find the value of a simple expression by substituting the variable (letter) by a number.

For instance: M+7 where M=4

3F where F= 5

and so on.

He did not have problems with those demands.  He learned quickly and sailed through those problems.

So I thought that I could move to the next step and with the help of the curriculum  Momentum Math grade 7, I asked Robert to write verbally presented expressions:

3 more than a number,

5 less than a number,

Add 8 and a number,

Subtract 10 from a number.

I did not analyze what such directions meant to Robert.

Thus when he hesitated after writing, “3+….” I did not understand his confusion.

Only when he later wrote “3+3” or “3+ 8” I understood the problems.

First, since I asked him to write a number, he responded with hesitation because I did not tell him what number exactly he should write.  But he also couldn’t ask, “What number?”,  He is not capable of using language this way yet.  So he tried to guess.  The first guess was the same number he already wrote, “3”.  The second guess was the number from another problem a little above this one, “8”.

I had to explain that the word “number” in this context, meant a letter.  Even more confusing. How can a number be a letter?  Such statement went against everything I was teaching him so far.

So I backed off and decided to first replace the word “number”  with a phrase “unknown number” and ask Robert to first replace such expression with a question mark and then with an empty square. I had to rewrite all the problems:

3 more than an unknown number.

Robert replaced it with: 3+ ?

I am still thinking about the next step to avoid confusion which I caused in the first place by not understanding what my words meant to Robert.

I wonder, how many times, while talking with Robert, I also gave him directions which did not make any sense as they went against everything he had learned before?

Lesson Learned

On Saturday, October 12, 2013 my husband and I picked Robert from Bridges to Independence program.  We planned to spend the Columbus Day weekend in New York with Robert’s grandmother.  My husband reluctantly let me drive first and so I got in the car, put the key in the ignition and tried to turn it on.  The key did not turn.  The car did not start.  Wrong key in the wrong car.

I tried to pull the key out.

It did not get out.

Jan tried to pull the key out.

It did not get out.

Reaching from the back seat. Robert tried to pull the key out.

We did not let him.

We called AAA.  They said it was  a busy day, so they would come in 35 minutes.

From the back seat, Robert tried to reach the key.  We stopped him.  He tried again.  We stopped him again.

Pam, the instructor from Bridges to Independence Program, offered to drive us both home.  Anticipating that Robert would get more and more impatient, I gratefully accepted.

Robert was not happy.  He did not want to leave the car, the key, and his dad  in the parking lot.

Pam kept calming him down and explaining that everything would be OK.

He believed her, but to the point.

I kept explaining that everything would be fine.

Robert believed me, but …

Jan was waiting for AAA.  I kept calling AAA.

After two and a half hours, to Robert’s relief, I decided to return to Bridgewater and pick up Jan.

Soon after we returned,  three hours after initial call to AAA,  the tow truck from AAA arrived and carried our car to a dealer.  Jan, Robert and I followed in the other car.

At the dealer another problem.  Robert already accepted the fact that the wrong car was stuck in the ignition.  He could not accept however, that my husband tried to leave ANOTHER key, the correct one,  with the dealer.  Two keys for one car!  It did not seem fair or right. Oh, well, somehow we managed at 6:30 PM to get on the interstate 95 aiming for New York City.

Of course, Robert remembered.

“Car key, car key.”

“Mother made a mistake. Put a wrong key in the car.  Mechanic will fix that.”

“Car key, car key.”

“What about car key?”

“At the mechanic.”

With a few slight variations this dialogue was repeated approximately 50 times before we reached Manhattan.

Lesson Taught

Fast forward to Monday morning.

Robert and I went to the car to get a bag of freshly picked apples from the trunk.  The apples spilled all over the trunk.  I gathered them all and tried to shut the trunk.  Robert stretched his arm preventing me from doing so.  He looked at me with a mixture of scorn and disappointment.  Very serious look.

As I froze a little confused, Robert reached to the trunk and retrieved the bunch of keys from it.

He stretched then bent his arm as if he weren’t sure if he should trust me with the keys.

“I will be more careful with keys.  I promise.”

Although the skeptical look didn’t disappear from his face, Robert gave me the keys.

He thought, I learned my lesson.