Corbin Ryan: Tutor Session with Christian #2

            My current mission is to ensure that Christian understands the English alphabet, for all of its letters, and for all of the sounds they make. A good, consistent exercise we will begin each of our following tutoring sessions is the recitation as well as writing down the alphabet. Real simple. “No need to re-invent the wheel,” as I heard my high school band teacher say many times.

            In running through the alphabet on our second session, I was amazed to find that Christian could transcribe it with a somewhat noticeably increased amount of ease. Still, he looked to me maybe about ten or fifteen times whenever he wasn’t sure what the next letter was. Whenever he got stumped, I would sing the ABC’s until just before the letter he was trying to remember. I’m trying to get Christian to sing the alphabet himself so that he will remember on his own, but maybe he is shy about singing, or maybe he doesn’t understand what I’m asking him to do. I can hardly imagine it’s the latter, so perhaps I may think about a different way to have him recite it. Whatever the case, I am amazed at how powerful that song is in mentally reinforcing the ABC’s.

             I brought with me a bound collection of Calvin and Hobbes hoping to gauge Christian’s reading level, to see if he could at least sound out words by looking at the individual letters. We really struggled over these, I think the comics were definitely too advanced for him. I need to adjust the reading material. Next session, I think I will focus on or at least gauge how well Christian knows the sounds that the letters make.