Tutor Session: Feb. 6th 2014

Plan: (Update) I've added a second student to my tutoring session. The original student is Wubayheu, an adult ESL student from Ethiopia. The new student is also an adult ESL student. Her name is Cake and she is from Thailand. Both students have similar struggles with reading and similar interests.

For our first official session I wanted to, first, find an article that interested them. Secondly, I wanted to introduce a strategy to help them with their concentration. The article I chose is called "Birth Order: What it Means for Your Kids... and You". We read this article and implemented strategies such as "clink and clunk", "think aloud", and pair work both during and after reading.

Actual: Before the reading the article we had a short discussion about birth order and whether or not it has any effect on personality. Next, the two students worked together to make a list of personality traits and how they related to the different birth orders (oldest, middle, youngest).

After this activity I front-loaded some vocabulary that I thought might be challenging. I introduced the basics of each of the eight words (ex. word form, 1 or 2 synonyms) then had the students write sample sentences using some of the words.

While reading students  used the clink and clunk strategy to manage comprehension and paused every two paragraphs to discuss what they read with their partner and to ask any questions to clear up confusion. Finally, after reading the essay students were tasked with creating a set of quiz questions. Finally, we revisited our vocabulary words. By looking at the words in context we were able to clarify the meaning and use of the vocabulary.

Analysis: The lesson went fairly well. The students enjoyed the topic of the article and the discussion associated with it. My first reaction to the lesson is that there were simply too many steps. I picked out this reading activity from one of the online recourses. While each individual step was beneficial, the overall lesson was a bit tedious. It seemed like the students were tired of completing news tasks by the end. If I had to do it again I would focus on the strategies before and throughout the reading process. The post reading strategy could be used to begin the next class.