Sarah- TP3

This was Shivani's and my first week of meeting for two hours. It was significantly more exhausting, but somehow, it still went by so fast! However I was extremely surprised that her husband waited in the library, in one chair the whole time, and I can't imagine that our session went as quickly for him! Before we began tutoring, her husband said that Shivani wants to focus more on her driving book than the grammar things we were doing. It was a good reminder that you can't bore your students, even if it is a tutoring session, and to keep their goals in mind as well. At the same time, I had to remind him that the book is extremely advanced and maybe that we're not ready for it. It is discouraging to me that she has a short term goal that is so out of reach. This would be a great long term goal for her, but the content and the language are... what did we call it? i + 50. So I guess I'll have to focus mostly on reading skills, and insert grammar lessons as needed.

The three of us also spoke about next week's plans, because it is Memorial Day, and (strangely) we will all be in Atlanta. (They are going to a baby shower at the Marriot, I am going to visit my best friend who is getting married at the Marriot in November. What a small world!)

When we finally did get to tutoring, we chose a book from the resource center of the library. It has a plethora of early reader resources! She chose a book about night animals with a bat on the front. Before we began reading however, we did go over the worksheet I gave her last time. She did pretty well on it, though her husband admitted afterwards that he helped her. But I guess I'd prefer that she learn a little more about the material from another person's explanation, than fumble through it and guess. We spoke a little about the ones she had missed, and I explained on paper why the right answer was better. After a few minutes of this, we opened the book and began reading.



This is the exact book we read!

She focuses so much on getting through each sentence, that despite her desire to learn, she doesn't seem to care about anything but completion! I guess this is natural, and I remember this feeling when reading aloud in my own classes. So I began asking her comprehension questions about the small paragraphs she was reading. At first she either looked at me completely lost, or answered something unrelated, so I began writing down the whole question like a quiz. This helped a bit. But for the most part, I still had to give her most of the answers and explain why. Making the questions easier and straight from the text didn't help becuase she wasn't comprehending what she read. So I had to make them conceptual. That helped after she got the concept, but didn't help with her reading comprehension! Somewhere while we were reading we entered into the second hour of tutoring....

TO BE CONTINUED
(please see Sarah- TP4)