Today I had my 3rd meeting with my child tutee Matthew. I found a great workflow for us in our last session so this one went really well. I began by once again making a pie chart of our session. This time the hour would be split into thirds with each topic taking 20 mins. This works so well for him because the lesson no longer seems to be nebulous and never-ending.
Matt was very engaged in every topic. Today we began something new: a writing exercise in which he is composing an opinion essay. We did a pre writing and brainstorming exercise together. To make it more interesting to him, I let him select his own topic, however he had to create three ideas first. He chose to write about why Call of Duty is better than Halo. These are video games he likes. He had some really interesting differences between the two and had no lack of material to write about. This will be an ongoing assignment in our sessions. By the end of our 8 tutoring sessions, he will have written the whole essay.
We then reviewed some past tense worksheets I had brought (at his mothers request). He needed quite a bit of help on this. He knew what sounded correct but not WHY it was correct. After this we once again finished up by reviewing vocabulary.
His homework is to finish reading the assigned pages for his book, "Call of the Wild." I came out of this session feeling like we both had accomplished a lot together!
Chris,
ReplyDeleteReally interesting to read this blog, I almost wanted to blog about your meeting as an observation because I was able to hear a lot of your session.
I'm glad you left feeling accomplished because from what I heard, I thought you were doing well! You kept him interested and most importantly you were facilitating his brainstorming. You were a very important guiding force and that's really significant for some one who has no idea what they're doing.