Wuzz, Im sorry your wife isn't improving. I'm keeping you in my thoughts and sending plenty of get-well vibes.
Lizzie, tell us how the horse course works out. I never heard of Carson James, but that doesn't mean anything. I have heard of Clinton Anderson, Pat Parelli, and other natural horsemen. I think their methods are very similar.
Uncle, I had to laugh at your post, and I'm glad if any of my posts are instructive, though they aren't meant to be. I'm just trying to share my process of teaching as I discover it myself.
I tutored today. The full schedule. I had the new boy, the new girl's 12-year-old brother. I asked him why his mom wanted me to tutor him, if he was having trouble with English, and he said he had no idea why she wanted him to take lessons from me, and he was doing well in English at school. I had him read aloud to me, a short biography of Tycho Brahe. What a character! I had never heard of him, but the main character in the book is named after the astronomer, so I thought it'd be good background info. If you want to read about a quirky life, Google him and see what comes up! The boy knew most of the words, so his vocabulary is OK, but he did sound awkward reading aloud, probably something he doesn't do often, so I recommended that he read aloud to his little sister 15 minutes or 1/2 hour every evening. This would benefit both of them. He looked horribly pained to have to do that, but he didn't argue. I told his mom about it, so maybe she'll make sure he does it.
I had him read a list of 6th-grade words and said he should tell me if he didn't know what some of them meant. Of course, if he could pronounce them, I had no idea if he knew their meaning, since he didn't stop and ask about any, but I did stop him at a few that he could pronounce, and if he couldn't say what they mean, I check-marked them and explained them. Some, he couldn't pronounce. I found that he wasn't very good at sounding them out, so, like his sister, he doesn't seem all that familiar with phonics, though he improved fast as we went through the list. We'll work some on that.
I gave him The Green Futures of Tycho to read in the week before I see him next and an assignment to write a page about anything he wants. I'll need to see what his writing skills are, which will tell me what spelling words to assign and what grammar he needs help with.
Then I went to the 3 original kids, who are all still doing diligent work, though the girl missed lots of commas in her direct address worksheet. She especially had trouble with the ones where the name of the person is in the middle of the sentence, not at the beginning or end, and, like all the kids, she was confused by some names of people. English names and nicknames are just something they have to learn as they know kids at school and read stories with names in them.
The little boy is speaking more English every day. This evening, his teacher and I set up an appointment to meet, and I hope to get some hints from her. I read the Little Golden Book of The Child's Garden of Verses to him today, and I think it was a bit too wordy yet. I thought maybe the rhythm of the poetry might catch his fancy, but I think he needs simpler picture books with limited amounts of words still.
The boy did his homework, and he got most of the word problems right this time. Some of the math was wrong, but I don't care about that as much as that he understood the question, though one, where someone was buying apples, and the answer was in the thousands and he had it in the hundreds, I said, "I wouldn't want to send you to buy apples for me!" Oh well, that's for his math teacher to work on, not me.
Then back to the new girl, the younger sister of the new boy. She is doing well, as usual. We tried reading The Child's Garden of Verses, since she asked last time to read poems, but the words were difficult, so I wound up reading them aloud after her struggling through a few. We stopped to discuss what each poem meant, and if she didn't understand, after we discussed it, I'd read it again and ask if now it made sense. I noticed that as I read, in that rhythmic way you read poetry aloud, she was swaying and nodding her head to the rhythm of it. Neat! I spent about 2 hours with her instead of the one hour I was supposed to, but I don't mind. Sometimes the lesson goes quickly, and I spend only a half hour instead of an hour, and the new girl talks a lot about everything, so that takes up time. I try to quell this when it gets excessive, but I do want her to discuss things, too, so I let her talk, even if sometimes she goes a little off course with it.
This evening, I got home just before 8 o'clock and put the lessons together, except the littlest boy and the new boy. I'll do them tomorrow.
The other boy said today he wants to study blood and the atom bomb in World War II, how the Japanese were bombed. We finished reading about atomic power used for electricity, and I think he found it boring. So he's interested in big explosions, not how it works, and I think he'll be disappointed in my next lesson which explains the circulatory system and what's in blood. I'm not sure what he wants to learn about blood, but I doubt it's the scientific facts. Still, that's what he'll get as the introductory blood course, till he gets inspired by some facet of it and tells me more specifically what he wants to learn. As for the atom bomb, if his reading was better, I'd suggest John Hersey's book, Hiroshima, which explains the effects in graphic detail. He'd like that, but I think since it's a book for adults, the vocabulary might be beyond him, though I should check it out. I read it and don't remember it being terribly difficult reading.
