Sarah- TP4

Continued from Sarah- TP3

It was the second hour of our two hour tutoring session now. We were still reading Creatures of the Night, a childrens book that Shivani had picked out. I was having trouble motivating her to work on comprehension, not just completion. I kept writing out questions each time we had come to the end of a paragraph. I also began making her re read sentences that she had clearly blown through. We slowed down her reading a bit and focused more on the meaning of the words she was sounding out, rather than the main ideas. I had been using my notebook at this point to help her visualize many of the things she was reading. For example, there was one sentence that said something like this: When it is very hot out, the desert mice will move to a shady spot under a rock to keep cool. There are many words in this sentence I didnt think she knew. I drew a scale for her kind of like this:

<              hot                            warm                              cool                          cold                >

and we talked about each temperature. She knew most of this, but it seemed to fall into place with the drawing, becuase she was a little unsure about "cool". I also drew a tree and the shade underneath it, and then the sun. We used this 2 second diagram as a demonstration of "to... from" as well as an explanation of the word shade, and reinforcement of "cool". We took a few moments to make some more examples of to and from such as, "Shivani went FROM her house TO the library." and, "After tutoring, Shivani will go From the library TO her house."

I recognized something that Shivani was doing as she read, that I remember doing while trying to read French. The word searching kept coming up. I put my hand over my forehead and turned my hand around the room and she was immediately able to come up with the synonym "looking". But the next time the word searching appeared, she looked confused again. I remember seeing a word that I recognized, and that I had just looked up, but still couldn't place. So we began to make a "vocabulary list". At first I kept track of words I wanted her to remember. Then, when we finished reading, I took a new sheet of paper and put "Shivani's Vocabulary" at the top with "(new words)" written underneath. I then had her copy my list onto her piece of paper, and I had her write definitions, or reminders beside each one. Searching was on the list, as well as prefer, to...from, and instead of. We had short lessons on "instead of" and "prefer" in the last 20 minutes. She was at first only able to answer, "Do you prefer Diet Coke instead of Sprite?" with "Diet Coke!" But towards the end, she was able to answer yes, or no to the instead of questions. It took a lot of visual work to explain "instead of" but it is a very useful phrase, and often used in directions, and I think she was proud to be answering correctly.

As homework, I told her to keep practicing her English out loud at home. I said that maybe over dinner, or in the mornings, they could agree to speak English. I also told her to make up two "instead of" sentences. I wrote out "instead of" with a big blank before and after it, so she would know what to do. I told her that she could use help from her husband, but that if she did, to then make her own example.

I will see them again in two weeks... Now that I realize that, I should have given her some more homework. Maybe more reading comprehension related! Hey, these blogs ARE useful! I'll have to prepare that for next time.