Video Four and Five “in the works”

I’ve written about how words tumble into my head and repeat themselves until I stop and write them down.

This morning those words involved my Videos that I am working on.

I’m a Reading Specialist and have taught many children how to read. I know some ideas that might not be known by regular classroom teachers because I have a graduate degree in Reading and also have been trained in Reading Recovery. Along the way I tried some ideas of my own and found that they worked well.

I’m incorporating all the strategies that worked for me to show homeschooling parents, or anyone else who wants to know, some ways to teach a child to read.

I’ve made three videos already and they can be viewed at ReadingbymsCorbett on youtube.

Here’s the link: ReadingbyMsCorbett

I did a beginning lesson. I did a lesson on vowels. I’ve done a shorter lesson on Environmental Print.

My next lesson is on high frequency or sight words. This morning the exact words I want to say came tumbling into my head right after I woke up and while I was considering going back to sleep for awhile.

I got up and wrote them down. Now Video four is written and all I need to do is make the visual aids and record the video. Then I have to edit it myself. My editor has flown the coop.

I expect to have it up by next Friday, October 7.

Then I will start working on Video Five. What I want to do with it also popped in my head. It will be on Initial Consonant Substitution. It’s a fun activity, but I need to do Lesson Four first.

I hope people will watch my videos and I hope they help.

 

I Write

I write to get words out of my head. It’s either a sickness or a muse, but words tumble in my head uninvited and if I ignore them, they begin to repeat themselves and if I don’t sit down and put them on paper, they speed up and drive me crazy until I do.

I had the most perfect children’s ABC rhyming book tumbling around in my head one morning when I was getting ready for work. I was running late (what else is new?) and decided to let it repeat itself until I got to work and then I’d jot it down. It was a long book, A to Z.

I kept it in my head, repeating, the whole way to work, which was about eleven miles away.

As I entered the building and was headed to my classroom and a piece of paper, or maybe a computer screen . . . someone intersected me (is that the right word?) and asked a question. When I stopped to answer, some of the letters and their rhymes disappeared from my head and I’ve never regained them.

The book began like this:

A is for alligator that lives in the deep

B is for bees that the beekeeper keeps (is beekeeper one word or two?)

C is for . . . well, I see I can only now remember two of the lines. It could have been a beautiful book with lovely illustrations.

Perhaps one day it will reappear. It’s been over a year, so who knows?

If you encounter me and I tell you “I’m Writing!”, please know something has entered my head and I’m trying to hold onto it until I can write it down.

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Sharing My Youtube Videos

I’ve been designing lessons to show home-schooling parents how to teach Reading. I’ve made three videos so far on my youtube channel, readingbymscorbett.

Yesterday I shared my latest (third) video with a friend who is also a teacher. He asked if he might share my videos with his ESL parents? Yes! Yes! Yes!

He did advise me to put just one teaching stategy into each video. That’s an idea I too had had. My first two videos covered four activities because I was trying to show how to construct a thirty minute Reading Lesson.

Now, I think I can make the videos just about one activity and parents can pick and choose which activity best suits and helps their child.

This has been a learning experience for me. My youngest son, Anthony, has edited my first three videos. He showed me earlier this week how to edit them myself, and I’ll try to do the next one.

I want the videos to be five minutes in length. The last one was ten minutes. The two before it were fourteen minutes.

My fourth video will be on high frequency words and hopefully I can narrow down what I tell and show to both cover the subject, but not belabor it.

For a link to my youtube channel, go here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9KOKFXmmsB3LgjQFmr-etw

Reading by Ms. Corbett

Environmental Print

I finished the third video, and it is now uploaded. My son edited it for me and showed me how to edit a video. I’m going to try to edit the next one.

I really tried to keep it around five minutes in length. This one is around ten minutes, so it’s still shorter than the first two, but not where I want it to be. I’ll try to make the fourth one shorter.

Here is the link to the third one. It’s about environmental print and how to make an environmental print book your child can read to you.

If you watch, I hope you enjoy it.

New Video Needed This Week

I posted my second video last weekend and got an email with advice in it shortly afterwards. It’s made me want to post a third video by this Friday.

This one will be shorter.

My editor is leaving the country soon, and I want to practice editing this video.

It needs to be short.

I bought the supplies to use in the video on Monday. I need to make a sample and then I need to make a couple of the children’s books that are in the process of being made.

My third video will be on environmental print. It’s a good activity with children who are learning to read. It gives them confidence and pride. They enjoy the process and they enjoy the finished product.

I may need to buy some color ink . . . I hope not.

At any rate, I plan to make the samples tomorrow (Wednesday) and the video on Thursday. It would be very nice if I could edit the video Thursday and publish it Friday. .

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Vowels – Video 2

Second Video Finally Uploaded

My second teaching video appears to be finally uploaded. I’ll post the link here if it’s really there when I check (and get my editor to help me) later.

The first time I uploaded the video on youtube, it was over 16 minutes long and I had to verify my account. Youtube said once my account was verified, it would be available without another upload. Youtube lied.

I went through the video and found a whole section and had my editor delete that part. That brought my video down to 14 minutes and some odd seconds.

I think I will aim for 5 minute videos in the future. These videos are tips by me on how to teach a child to read. They are aimed at home-schooling parents, but certainly anyone wanting to teach a child to read or help a child read better might watch them.

The first two videos contained explicit instructions for doing a reading lesson with a child. Now I think I will make the videos more about other techniques to use when a child is learning, or struggling to read. Every child is different and the lessons can be tailor made by the instructor.

This second video is on vowels – introducing them and working on capital I. The third video will be about how to make a book that your child can read at the end of the lesson.

I put new curtains in the dining room and I think I’ll move my camera out there to record the next lesson.

First I want to be sure this one is up and ready to view. If it is, I’ll post the link here on my next post.

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It’s Not Me

Have you ever noticed how you can wake up in a great mood and the dredges of the day pull you down until you wish you’d never gotten out of bed? That happens to me frequently.

I am thinking the cause of ALL my problems are interacting with other people. I seriously think that if I could avoid the human race, I would be a happy person.

In just the last 24 hours, I found out that my doctor is disliked by more of her patients than I realized, and that the ones posting reviews have had similar interactions with her.

Then for the umpteenth time, the substitute teacher office of the county where I reside called to say they STILL don’t have a copy of my second reference form. One person has sent hers twice; one sent hers once because I MAILED IT myself for her. Yet, they claim they only have one reference form received for me. (I gave forms to three people in case there was a problem.) I feel like I need to drive the person down there and have them hand deliver the form to the woman who says she can’t find them.

I’ve noticed in recent years, and posted about it before, that the level of incompetence among employees now is astounding. With so many people out of jobs, you’d think places could hire someone who can and will do the job.

So . . . I was going along this morning in a relatively good mood and checked my voice mail. My ears have something wrong with them. It physically hurts me to listen on the phone and now I’ve spent 20 minutes with pain in my ear as I tried to fix this woman’s incompetence.

I’m trying to find a year-round campground and then I’ll buy a tent and hopefully won’t have to be bothered with the human race any more. I doubt that will work, but it will be cheap and if I make myself look bad enough, no one will approach me and maybe I can avoid the rest of the human race and stay in a good mood.

Great . . . now the landline is ringing. Well, ring away. I’ll be damned if I’m talking on another phone today. My ear hurts.

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Advice

There is a reason I will no longer give advice to aspiring writers. That doesn’t mean I won’t continue this blog, which sometimes contains advice. But if anyone, who wants to be a published writer, comes to me with questions or seeks encouragement, I have no answers and refuse to read anyone else’s “manuscripts” any more and give “free” critiques.

One of my sons has a vlog. He frequently disparges me on it because he doesn’t like me. His most recent vlog included a rant about how his mother suggested that he give away something he had written.

Here’s what actually happened, and it’s the straw that broke this camel’s back.

I saw his blogs online and the first one I read was about Pokemon’ Go!. It was very well written, contained great ideas, and impressed me. I told him he could sell some of the things he had written on that blog. That’s what I said.

What he seemed to have heard was, “you can get rich quick selling this stuff and should do that right away”.

So he asked me, who is a writer and has been published, to find markets for his stuff. He seems to have trouble navigating the Writer’s Market. Well, so did I until I spent time learning how to use it.

So in response to his request to find markets, I commented that I’d had a guest column published in The News and Observer, which is read by many in North Carolina. I suggested he send his blog in first as a letter to the editor, because I felt sure they’d use it for that at least, and in hopes of them asking to use it as a guest column. One of my letters to the editor at the News and Observer did turn into a guest column at their request. I think the date was May 25, 2005, but I cannot find the link online.

He wanted to know how much they’d pay? Well, actually nothing. But he’d have that publication “under his belt” and it would help him get more things published.

His response was that he wasn’t giving his work away for free. Then he went on to vlog about how his mother told him he could sell his writing and then suggested he give it away for free.

I am no amateur writer. I’ve been published more than once. I’ve let some of my things get published by big markets for free just for the exposure. The more credits you have, the more seriously would-be publishers will consider your submissions.

I guess my son thinks I know very little to suggest he could sell things he wrote, but then to suggest he give away his first publication. The topic was “hot”, which means it needed to be published quickly. He has no publishing credits that I know of, to impress a market who might want to buy this article, and if he does, he needs to navigate that Writer’s Market and find them.

I am not the “go-fer” for aspiring writers. I have always helped others when I could. That’s why I went to college to become a teacher and why I studied even more to become a reading specialist. I wrote and had some things published along the way. It wasn’t because someone looked at what I wrote and looked in the Writer’s Market and found a publisher for me. You’d be surprised how many people expect me to do that. Uh . . . I am BUSY with my own writing career. If you don’t care enough about yours to do the work that goes with it, then your writing won’t get published.

I cannot remember how many writing courses I have taken and completed to learn about the craft and business of writing. When I use something I’ve learned to try to help someone else, ridicule and rejection does not “sit well” with me.

Don’t send me things you want to publish and ask me to find a publisher. Don’t share your writing with me in hopes I can magically help you get rich.

There is no explaining to me why someone asks for advice and then not only rejects it, but makes fun of it.

I’ve had enough. If any writing is going to get looked at for publication by me, it will be my own.

 

Second Video

I let this computer lanquish as it uploaded my second video.

My youngest son had spent time editing it. I’d asked that he get it to or below 15 minutes. He cut enough out to make it 16 minutes. No worries. It would still upload. He said.

So for over twelve hours, I let this computer sit mostly idle while it took its sweet time uploading sixteen minutes to my youtube channel.

By mid-day today, it had finally finished. It had a note beside the announcement that it was fully uploaded. It was over the length specifications and my account needed verification. Oh, dear. What did that mean? I bothered my son and asked him to come show me what to do. As typical technology savvy offspring usually do, he sat down at the computer and began clicking keys. This was not a learning experience for me.

He announced that he needed a phone number, so I gave him my cell phone and he used that number. Youtube sent him two different strings of numbers to enter. He did that and then said my account had been verified. He suggested I watch one of the videos I enjoy watching on my hulu account. Instead of clicked on my weblink to my second video. The screen announced that it had been removed due to length. I went to my son and told him.

He said he knew. He said he was using his computer and to please not try to upload it again right now.

So I went to youtube to check out the problem myself. It seems this is a common occurrence. Even though you are told you will not have to upload your video again, after you verify your account, you do.

What’s to say they won’t pull the same thing the next time I let my computer download/upload, whatever load, a video, especially since it’s still too long????

I got an email saying google needed to verify that this was my billing email address. Why would google bill me? Is there a charge for uploading a longer than 15 minutes video?

All I know is I’ve done this same damn video five times. Five times I’ve gone through all the things I wanted to say. Then it was nineteen minutes long and somehow my son couldn’t chop off one more minute to help me.

I guess I’m a writer, and not a video maker.

I guess I’ll give up, which is something I seldom do.

I also seldom have to do anything more than five times to get ir “right”.

This is why you won’t see any more video links here. There won’t be any more. I have better ways to spend my time and so does my computer.

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