Andrea TS #2

My second tutoring session of today was with a six year old girl named Hye-jeong. Before meeting I went to an office supply store and bought some markers, colored pencils, stickers, a drawing pad, and a notebook with inch-wide lines for spelling practice. I bought this out of my own money but it really helped me connect with my tutee in the end, so it seemed worth it to me. (Real teachers often have to supply their own rooms so I suppose it's not too far from reality.) I also went to the Goldstein Children's Library to borrow some books. I chose four books in a range of difficulty levels since the first session should include assessment. The simplest book is called "What Do You Love?" We read the book together, and afterwards I asked her to think about some things she loves. She chose drawing, so I had her practice spelling the word out and writing it. Then I had her draw something in her drawing book, to keep her attention. In our discussions we ran into the issue of capital letters and lower case letters, so I explained why "drawing" does not use a capital D if it's in the middle of the sentence. Afterwards we read another book, and we switched off reading every other page. The book forced her to learn how to sound out words she had never seen before. We also did some work with vowels, which she didn't know at all. It took her a little while, but she seemed fascinated with the idea that the letter Y is sometimes a vowel and sometimes it's not. She came up with her own system of circling the Y when it was a vowel to designate that it was only "sometimes" a vowel. (She circled only half of the letter, as opposed to the entire letter for AEIOU) Finally, we practiced rhyming with a coloring worksheet. It's clear that she likes drawing a lot so the best way for me to keep her focused was offering chances to color and draw. At the end, I let her choose a sticker for being good. When her mom appeared, I told Hye-jeong that her only homework was to tell her mom and dad what we did together. The mom and I came to an agreement about when we would meet regularly and some basic rules. I was surprised how much I loved working with Hye-jeong. I don't have a lot of experience with children, but it truly brightened my day. I left feeling happy and confident.