Given that Christian usually asks if we can go across the
street to the basketball courts after our tutoring sessions, I decided to focus
our final lesson on the vocabulary of basketball. To state the obvious, to
state one of the mantras of this course, English is a tool for communication,
and the goal here is that Christian will be able to communicate better with
other players (outside of our session) on the court, which will hopefully lead
to more opportunities for listening and speaking practice.
To begin the lesson plan, I had him copy the alphabet,
both upper and lower-case. After that, we took to the courts. I brought chalk,
made drawings and arrows, and did my best to verbally, repeatedly demonstrate:
-Hoop
-Net
-Basket (“What do the
hoop and the net make together?”)
-“Shoot a basket”
-Dribble
-Backboard
-Shot
-Pass/ “Pass the ball!”
It seemed that “pass the ball!” stuck with him the most.
I would call it a successful lesson if he remembers just that one for the rest of his basketball career. Because he’s
still working on being able to read, of course I had to instill these phrases
and words in him verbally. We just shot hoops and I would keep telling him to “pass
the ball” or “shoot a basket,” etc.
By our last session together, Christian was able to:
-Write out the entire
alphabet
-Spell short words
-Communicate simple
ideas, comprehend questions and requests I give to him
-Pass the ball when asked
to
It
was a humbling task to teach this child who recently arrived in this country
with little grasp of the English alphabet, and I am grateful for the
opportunity and experience this task brought me. I can only hope that, in the
future, he continues to learn and has more highly trained and experienced
teachers who can do a much better job than I could, and over a longer span of
time.
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