Tuesday, November 7, 2006
I was feeling so good about Alesia completing Lindamood Bell, and then yesterday the bottom fell out. I sent this to her main tutor, Bronwyn, about Gabriella, the new tutor:
I talked to Gabriella last night. She had given Alesia a project assignment out of the program, to write a paper called Safari to Kenya. Alesia understood the assignment and did OK on that. However, she looked up Kenya
in the Encyclopedia and wrote about it, too. She just plagiarized whole paragraphs from the Encyclopedia!
I confronted her about it in the car after pottery. I asked her first off "What does it mean when you copy someone else's work?" and she said "Plagiarism." Mother thought she didn't understand that, even though I explained that I've talked to Alesia about plagiarism. Mother really didn't think she understood. Well, she did.
So we had quite a discussion in the car. I explained to Alesia that plagiarism is stealing. When we got home, I printed out an article on it from the web and told her to read it. I told Mother I don't like Alesia using the encyclopedia anyway, since it's 30 years old. We're going to have to figure out a way Alesia can do research on the computer, with someone watching her. She has no clue how to research and write a paper. I think we need to go slow, however. She doesn't even write proper sentences most of the time.
I told Gabriella to just not give her anything like that for a while. I am going to work with Alesia on her writing skills. I told her the more she reads, the easier it will be to write.
I gave Alesia an assignment to read a book for me this week [From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil Frankweiler] and report to me on it on Saturday. She will have to look up some of the words. She's not reading enough.
Gabriella is starting to understand what we face with Alesia. She was shocked at how little Alesia knows, and her level of unsophistication. I told her about Alesia not understanding that we have the same moon as Russia, how that was a wake-up call for me last year.
So, as Mother says, one step forward, two steps back.
