Awake

Writing Dixon Ticonderoga

Ruth's mom's apartment is in the building across the complex's asphalt "courtyard." A species of vermin of which I am thankfully unfamiliar has invaded Ruth's apartment and apparently her mom is amenable to Ruth and her daughter staying there and stay there she does.

This has complicated our one-on-one literacy tutoring sessions considerably. (Have I mentioned Ruth's six young siblings that live in that apartment? No? There are six kids living in that apartment and an unknown number of adults.) My solution? Bring picture books at a level and with content consisitent to what I am teaching Ruth. It works fairly well.

So last night I arrived at the apartment armed with picture books and some scrap notebook cards. (Need to bring more of those next time. They were unexpectedly popular.) I sat down on the couch and the first thing that happened was each of the kids one-by-one showed me their scapes, cuts, blisters and bruises they had endured the past week. I handed out the few bandaids I happened to have in my purse and proceeded with story time. Oh yes, Lemons Are Not Red was at the top of the list. That book is awesome.

After story time was over, I sent the kids off to their corners with various books so I could work with Ruth individually. A couple of the kids plugged in a Dora video into the VCR and watched that. It's so interesting and fun to watch these kids from Somalia learn English and Spanish at the same time!

During this time, one of the boys was writing down letters on scrap pieces of notebook paper. Every few minutes, one of the other boys would take the piece of paper and bring it to me, asking what it said. Most of the time it was just random letters which didn't make any sense or any words for that matter. This kept on for several iterations. Finally, he brings me a piece of paper with two long lines of letters, all in caps. It reads, "DIXON TICONDEROGA." Oh I laughed. I about fell off the couch I laughed so hard. I explained to the others in the room that he had copied the letters from his pencil, a Dixon Ticonderoga 1388-2, which I had given to him weeks before. I asked for the piece of paper (as a blog-worthy souvenier) and gave him a picture book on Months to copy instead.

Good times.