Sarah- TP5

I met with Shivani last night for the first time in two weeks because of Memorial Day. We spoke about what we did on Memorial Day weekend, and searched through the books for something she could read later in the lesson. She kept looking for something with directions, but there really wasn't anything like that available. After the lesson however, Karen (lady who is in charge of tutors) showed me some roadsigns that she keeps stored away and gave me permission to use them which I am very excited about for next Monday! I know Shivani wants to focus more on passing her driver's test, and I'm happy for some materials to do so. Karen also gave me a handout with some ideas for using road signs to teach English. The library's resources are great!

Once we finally got down to starting the lesson, I gave her some easy reading and comprehension sheets. They seemed perfect for introducing the question and answer concept. If any of you are working with early foundations students, these are amazing, although students who are used to school and multiple choice may find them too easy. Here is one of the worksheets:

Passage

Anna is an artist.

She draws the moon.

She draws clouds.

She draws stars.

Questions
1) Anna is

A. an artist

B. a doctor

C. an actor


2) Anna draws things that

are in the

A. ground

B. ocean

C. sky


3) Anna draws

A. shells

B. stars

C. flowers


4) Anna does not draw

A. the moon

B. clouds

C. trees


5) Anna probably also draws

A. airplanes

B. trees

C. fish

She did relatively well on the first three questions, and I helped a little on numbers 4 and 5. Explaining probably and what it means as an inference quesiton was difficult, and I had to simplify it to "guess". I tried to show her though that moon, clouds, and stars are all similar because they are found in the sky, and so we should guess the answer that is most similar, the one also in the sky. I think she understands but we had problems with this question on the second worksheet as well. I gave her two more of these for homework for this week, so hopefully that practice will help as well.

This reading is extensive for Shivani, and it's nice to see her handle something that she is more comfortable with. I'm hoping to move onto the grade 2 worksheets soon. Her driver's ed manual on the other hand, is extremely intensive. She is determined to work on it though, so I've decided we can go over two questions per session, and try to break down the meaning for her, and then find the answers in the book. I am having her read the sentence out loud as best as she can, and underline the words she doesn't know. She not at the point where she can guess meanings yet, so I usually just have to explain it. We find a replacement word that she can write over the "fancy word" and then reread the sentence, which has helped a little. The sentence structure is often complex or inverted though too, and its just really tough to get through sometimes.

After we did these questions, we took a break, as we had gotten through the first hour of tutoring...