Pamela's Typical Day

I plan to blog typical homeschool days and, later, detailed information about what I am calling "Guided Reading" and "Guided Written Narration". Last week, Pamela and I followed this outline fairly well considering I had major time eaters unexpectedly dumped upon me. Pamela is an early riser, so she usually starts her math on her own BEFORE eight o'clock. The activities in green are the ones she does independently.

08:00 AM Math: Making Math Meaningful Level 6

09:00 AM Guided Reading (one chapter, two books):
Tom Sawyer, Good-Bye, Mr. Chips

10:00 AM Language Arts: Copywork/Studied Dictation/Recitation/Grammar or Spelling Lesson

10:15 AM Guided Written Narration (two books from yesterday):
The Winged Watchman, The Brendan Voyage

10:45 AM Art: Candlewicking/Picture Study

11:00 AM RDI games and lifestyle activities

12:00 AM Break
01:00 PM Lunch

01:30 PM Association Method:
Oral Work and Written Work

03:00 PM Guided Reading (two books):
The Winged Watchman (one chapter)
The Brendan Voyage (a few pages)
Language Arts related to the books

04:45 PM Rehearse choir piece for Sunday

04:55 PM Exercise for five minutes on the elliptical

I put the schedule in Excel and check it off as we go. I circle tasks we failed to accomplished to remind me to make them up. Pamela with her sequential orderly mind wants to finish the list and cooperates with me to get finish off the list.

Two RDI Incidents to Share

Jennifer's most righteous and spot-on rant would have made me spew on my beautiful new laptop screen had coffee been in my mouth. If you have a child with autism and had never had a close encounter of the worst kind with a complete stranger who supposedly knows more than you, consider yourself blessed. When Pamela was younger, I had my share of embarassing meltdown moments (like the time Pamela did the Indy 500 around the altar at church ten minutes before the service was to start). Today, we get odd looks and occasional knowing smiles because Pamela is much more comfortable in her skin and I am better at not placing her in extremis.

Jennifer reminded me of a recent incident at Wal-Mart. We were at the self-checkout again where we practice our RDI objectives and the clerk told me, "Wow! Your daughter has really made progress. I remember when you first started teaching her how to scan at the self-checkout." Can you believe a positive experience with a complete stranger?

Also, a few weeks ago our neighbors joyfully shared another incident. They are wonderful people and very encouraging of our efforts to homeschool our teens. The neighbor told me that Pamela was sitting on the back porch rocking. Pamela waved, greeted him, and said, "I'm waiting for my mom to go to Wal-Mart." Can you believe it? She *wanted* to engage in a brief conversation without any prompting. She just had to share that tidbit with the neighbor. Pamela is not one of those chatty kids who opens up to anyone. Six months ago, I would have had to pry that out of her in front of a neighbor.

What To Do on Messy Days

I started Pamela on her new schedule this week and have struggled to stay on track because of things like unexpected, unplanned disruptions. Today, for example, I ran out of fish food and had to go to Wal-Mart, had to mail a package for my husband, and had to make a two-and-a-half-hour trip to pick him up from work because his logistical plan left that as his only option. With a little bit of thought and flexibility, I managed to stick with the plan of the day. How, you ask? Read on!

* Usually, I do some RDI-like activity with Pamela at eleven o'clock (games, puzzles, etc.). I realized I could knock out my errands by making them RDI like. I had Pamela address the package on folder labels. Then, I positioned the strip and looked up at her for nonverbal approval. Sometimes, I put them in odd places (like my nose), just for fun. At the post office, she became my hands: she handed the package and a letter to the clerk. She handed the money to the clerk. At Wal-Mart, I made a game of her guessing which way to go by following my gaze. Then, she had to figure out what to select on the shelf by referencing me. As always, we did the self-checkout as a team, and she did a terrific job of correcting a mistake. She scanned the sugar twice, immediately caught her error, and maneuvered her way through the touch screen to rectify it.

* I had another problem that I solved creatively. I needed to make up Pamela's speech therapy sheets, which involved manipulating two pictures to make eight pictures. I have been teaching David different tricks for computer science. I realized I could have him do it since this task was new to him. I taught him how to use a SD card reader (uh, because I lost my camera cord awhile back), send pictures from the card reader to My Documents, and rotate a picture by angles and trim in MGI Photosuite. ALL of these tasks were new to him, and he saved me about fifteen minutes of busywork. He was psyched because as much as he formats pictures, he had not figured out how to rotate by angle and trim.

* I rearranged my schedule so that Pamela did tasks requiring interaction in the morning. I brought work for Pamela to do in the car. She spent much of our time on the road doing paperwork independently (speech therapy, language arts, etc.).

Overcome Stereotypes and Fear of Math!

Actress Danica McKellar's probably not the person who comes to mind when you picture a mathematician. Danica's displayed high mental acumen in the field by proving her own theorem. And, she graduated summa cum laude in math though she first intended to study writing and directing in college.

And because of her influence as an actress, McKellar's changing a stereotype that prevented many girls from success in math. Interestingly, young men are more likely to have higher opinions of their abilities in math and science than women. Added to that, men hold four times the number of full-time university faculty positions in math, science, and engineering. To illustrate this, "As McKellar sat in a sea of male classmates in her advanced classes," according to a recent article in Good Magazine, "she realized she was living the direct repercussions of these early gender inequalities."

What's the difference then? Educational researcher Patricia Campbell, who evaluates math and science programs for the National Science Foundation says, "We've gotten girls to take math. We've gotten girls to use math. But, we haven't gotten them to love it."

Myths about intelligence The problem's multifacted... On one hand it's related to myths gals may hold about their brains... If gals believe guys are smarter at math, they set up self fulfilling prophecies, since the brain picks up that message. The more you feed your brain that perception the less you'll calculate math with ease. To overcome this, if women understand their brains have equal potential and that the more they think they can do math, as Danica McKellar models, the more success they'll experience as they build new confidence.

Fear Danica goes so far as to say that, "Girls fear math." For some, fear leads to lower test outcomes. Recent research at Michigan State University reveals that "while under pressure those most likely to succeed will most likely fail." That's because "individuals higher in working memory capacity are more likely to be negatively impacted by performance pressure on math tests than those lower in working memory capacity." We've all experienced testing pressure and know of some friends who failed because worry incapacitated them. But anybody can bust the fear barrier and turn it around.

Plasticity of the Brain If girls knew more about their brain and how it works, it might help overcome these past stereotypes and fears. According to Barry Conners of Brown University, the plasticity of the human brain impacts its ability to change. So as young women begin with the premise "I think I can..." more positive outcomes they'll see. With positive outcomes, they'll build more dendrite brain cells for calculating math. And as they do, the more confident they'll become. Do you sense that gals may find a love for math as Danica has?

Taking Stats after 40 years When I was recently attending university, I was required to take statistics. Quite frankly I was scared because I had not taken a math course in 40 years. There were many things that influenced my "A" outcome at graduate level. The teacher used new approaches that drew from spatial intelligence. Don't forget that Einstein developed the theory of relativity because he visualized the curve of the arc. I began to understand stats because of the teacher's methodologies. And the more I began to use statistics in my research, the more confident I became. Women and men can grow new smarts, when they open their mind to learn... even when they're older!

Test taking tactics By practicing on sample tests, women and men learn strategies that help build confidence and more dendrite brain cells are built so that test tactics can be summoned when needed. In this way, people can overcome "fear" that could lead to failure at test time.

I'm glad Danica's a "Math Wonder." I anticipate we'll soon see more women engineers and mathematicians as they overcome former stereotypes and fear.

If stereotypes or fear have prevented your success in any area, good news is that you can bust the barriers.

Thoughts?

Paperback Writer

Pamela and I shopped at Wal-Mart on Sunday night. She picked out a spiral notebook and told me she wanted to start another journal. In fact, she planned to make entries dating back to the year of her birth. Three years ago, I required Pamela and David to keep a journal, which they did for two years.

Yesterday, Pamela sat on the rocking chair on the back porch and filled fifteen pages, spanning 1989 through June 2004. I decided to type her journal to help me analyze it better. According the Word's readability statistics, she wrote 2,583 words at a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 4.8 in one day. She is amazing! When I told David about it, he quipped, "Oooo, paperback writer!"

For those of you with young children who despise writing, keep this in mind: Pamela cried and screamed at the sight of a pencil when she was six-and-a-half years old. I put her on a one-year sabbatical from writing to help her recover from this phobia. She started to learn to write at the age of seven-and-a-half, and I enlarged the paper supplied in Handwriting without Tears because the blocks were too small! She spent two years doing the first grade level of that writing program! Fast forward a decade later and she is flying in her ability to write legibly!

We have not covered past tense verbs in the association method, and she clearly struggled with irregular verbs, writing ated, blowed, wented, etc. Her efforts caused me to rethink my strategy for her language development. Now, I plan to do the following:

* Continue pursuing present tense (right now, I am introducing present tense plural) with her primers.

* Work on cleaning up past tense when narrating (both orally and in writing) books she is reading.

However tempting it may be, I do not plan to have her fix her journal entries. I think it would dampen her enthusiasm for keeping a journal. I see it as a record of where her syntax is at present. If Charlotte Mason can comfortably publish the unedited writings of her students, I can surely leave Pamela's journal as is.

We're Back

Last Tuesday, we received our new computer, a Dell Inspiron 1720, and she is a beauty. Since then, I have been busy wrapping up the old school year with required annual reports and planning the new year. We school year round, so my kids had the week off when the neighborhood kids started school. I will post my planned typical schedules later in the week.

I thought I would hate adjusting to Vista, but we have not run into any glitches yet, All of our old software has survived the transition (even a 1995 version of MGI PhotoSuite). The graphics are sweet on this machine, and the screen is wide enough for me to see the entire year in my Excel spreadsheet in one glance!

TouchGraph - A Visual Tool to Jumpstart Ideas!

Have you tried using TouchGraph? The TouchGraph Google Browser reveals the network of connectivity between websites, as reported by Google's database of related sites. In addition Google offers this option for facebook and Amazon, too! Here's an example of what you see when you insert the Brain Based Biz URL in the Google TouchGraph Browser:

You can use the Amazon TouchGraph Browser to examine connections between books, movies and music. Explore which books or albums relate, see how similar items form clusters around common subjects, and discover how the clusters themselves are connected within the information space. This tool can jumpstart your noodle in new directions!

Or if you've recently joined facebook, why not see your connections with a whole new perspective on TouchGraph facebook Browser! See how friends are connected, and who has the most photos together! Or, explore your networks by graphing photos from anyone's album, or view the connections between members of a group.

How do these tools push your imagination? Ideas...