Change for Kids

Last week, I was not able to attend the tutoring session, so Giomar took over my students for me. When I came back this week, I started off reviewing the list of high-frequency words with my two students, since they said they had already gone over the list with Giomar. I had them each alternate reading the words out loud with the four columns. To my surprise, they seemed to remember almost every word that they had learned during the week I was not there. For those words they struggled with, I kept my own records of which ones they were by recording them down on paper. My two students seemed to find it amusing when I started to keep track of the words they did not know. They caught on quite fast, and they themselves kept track of which words each one of them individually struggled with. I found it entertaining by the fact that when I started to help one of them with the proper pronunciation, the other one would say, “ohh…she’s having trouble with this word!” As a result, this helped me keep a more concise and accurate list. It seemed to be a race between the two of them because one of them wanted to have the same number of wrong words as the other one. My students were very eager to assist each other. Whenever one of them had trouble with a particular word, the other one instantly thought of sentences, such as “She is the _____ who is helping us,” and the first one almost always pronounced the word properly as a result.

Overall, I would say my two students were very eager and excited to learn. After I finished reviewing the list of high-frequency words with them, I told them the next thing we were going to do was to practice using some of the high-frequency words by filling in blanks in order to complete sentences on the worksheets that I gave them. I gave each of them the same worksheet. When I worked with each of them individually to fill in the blanks, by reciting the sentences out loud, the other one, again, used other examples at the same time to guide the first one so she could fill in the missing blanks with the proper words.

Towards the end of the session, Giomar and I worked together to review Tortillas with both of our students combined  together. They each took turns reading the book out loud in a storytelling format. Both of our students got through the book relatively quickly. Afterwards, the students each picked a particular scene from the book to illustrate, and each one summarized what he or she drew.

The students appeared to enjoy both mine and Giomar’s presence there, and they were greatly disappointed when we told them that this week, because of the Thanksgiving break they have, we will not come for the next tutoring session. Since it is so easy to work with my students, I really look forward to the next upcoming tutoring session!