Corbin Ryan: Tutoring Session #12 with Christian

            For this session with Christian, we focused again on identifying upper and lower-case letters as well as copying words. The lesson plan for this session included:

1.     Have C write the ABC’s with no outside aid

2.     Match upper and lower-case in groups of five (and one group of six) in chalk on the driveway

3.     Have C copy short words I write on the pavement, to practice letters outside of the context of the alphabet, as well as practice for eventually writing words.

4.     Read a couple books

Once again, Christian can produce the alphabet flawlessly, an improvement compared to when we struggled to get through the alphabet in the first few sessions we had together. Though it was definitely clear at the time that Christian wasn’t having the best time struggling to put every letter next to one another and getting frustrated, it definitely helped get us to the level that we’re at today. Of course, I know that I could have used a better, more fun method of teaching him the English alphabet, but at least now I know, and better yet, C knows the alphabet.

C had little difficulty in matching up the letters. He clearly recognizes the different versions as being one in the same. The next step, though, is teaching him the context in which each set is used.  

Corbin Ryan: Tutoring Session #13 with Christian

            For tutoring Session #13 with Christian, the plan went as:

1.     Have C write out the alphabet

2.     Copy the alphabet, lower and upper-case 

3.     Match upper and lower-case letters to their counter-parts in chalk on the driveway

4.     Verbally instruct C to draw out different shapes and objects in different colors to test comprehension skills (ex., “draw me a red TV/a yellow cat/a blue house)

5.     Finish up by reading a couple books

Christian had no issue with any of the activities/exercises. He perfectly matched all the upper and lower-case letters, so he definitely recognizes, or rather, comprehends the letters’ counter-parts. The next step, which I will attempt in the next lesson, is to see how he does in producing the different sets of the alphabet.

I had him draw different things of different colors since I realized he had trouble producing the names of colors during our last session, even for his favorite color “yellow.” He understood what he needed to do when I asked him to draw x thing with y color, so it is clear that he is  receptive to those words.

To finish the lesson as we usually do, we read a couple books I checked out from the library. He seems to favor Curious George.  

Corbin Ryan: Tutoring Session #14 with Christian

            For tutoring session #14 with Christian, I had planned out a pretty cerebral lesson, centered around using chalk on the driveway to practice and reinforce the upper and lower-case letters, copying simple words, letter-word association, etc. But, when I arrived at Christian’s house that Thursday evening, it was very clear that he was feeling very low-energy, and was in a bad mood. He had just woken up from a nap, and it was the end of the first week of school for him.

I tried to hype him up for our lesson, but it failed to pull him out of his slump. It was obvious that it would be best not to try out what I had planned for him, as it would only make him more miserable that evening, and risk the possibility of weakening our teacher-student relationship. In my backpack, I had brought my Gameboy Advance with a copy of the Legend of Zelda. In previous sessions, Christian would ask me: “Next time, can you bring this one?” as he would pantomime with his thumbs and fingers playing a handheld videogame device. I don’t how he knew.

I had brought the videogame as a reward for after the lesson, but I decided it would be best to try out some speaking and listening practice for that session by teaching him how to play Zelda. I guided him through dungeons and fields within the game, and he understood. He had some difficulty navigating the game, but I he definitely enjoyed it. I taught him the directions “left” and “right,” so hopefully those ideas will stick with him. 

Corbin Ryan: Tutoring Session #15 with Christian

            This session, I was very pleasantly surprised to arrive to Christian’s house and find that he was bursting with energy to learn new things, unlike the last session when I had to resort to a back-up activity because it was painfully clear that he had no energy for the regular lesson-plan I prepared. 

            The plan I organized for this session went like this:

1.     Copy all upper and lower-case letters of the alphabet

2.     Find a word from a word-bank based on the first letter of the word, other sound-word associations he can find within the written word

3.     Read a couple books together

4.     Time permitting, letter-word association run of the alphabet

In the second activity, he was very interested in looking at a word from the word bank and spelling it himself. I was amazed that he wanted to try to learn something, whereas normally I’ve had to just trick him into learning.

During the activity he asked “Can I write this word”

Without any sort of hesitation, I said “Yeah! Sure, go ahead!!”

Without looking at the written words, he wrote out:

-Frog

-Yes

-Ball

-Pig

-You

-Six

-Dog

-No

-Book

-Us

-We

      I believe that his desire, not to mention ability to duplicate these words without looking at the word-bank demonstrates a huge leap for Christian. After the activity, I read to him a couple Curious George books I checked out from the LeRoy Collins Public Library, which was all we had time for.  

Tutoring Session with Christian #16; THE FINAL LESSON

            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.  

Corbin Ryan: Tutor Session #3 with Sundol

The third tutoring session I held with Sundol was also at my place. The session also revolved around an H3H3 video, this one titled "How we Met at the Holocaust Museum." I picked the video for similar reasons as the last one; the story-tellers speak like normal, regular English speakers, there are two different accents used in the video, and the story has a follow-able structure.  

For this lesson, I left the subtitles off in order to challenge Sundol's  listening skills, which he had a noticeably more difficult time with, at least when I asked him the context questions at the end of the activity. For example, though the two story-tellers don't explicitly say it, Sundol didn’t put it together that Ethan and Hila (the two members of H3H3) are Jewish, given the context that they met in Israel on the Birthright trip, which would probably be obvious to most Americans, or westerners for that matter. I'm not sure if the connection wasn’t made because he simply didn't understand very well what the story-tellers were saying, or if the two concepts are just completely foreign in South Korea, and aren't familiar to most people who grow up there. Of course, it became apparent he was familiar with the Holocaust once I pointed out its relation to World War II. Could have been that Sundol just didn’t know the word in English.  

Sundol was definitely challenged. I hope that because of this, he left my apartment having honed his listening skills. 

Corbin Ryan: Tutor Session #2 with Sundol

I finally got around to testing Sundol's listening skills for the first time during our second tutoring session. He came to my apartment so that we would be able to hear the text as loud as we wanted without bothering anyone nearby.  

The lesson seemed to be pretty successful. I centered the session around a YouTube video by YouTubers H3H3, a married couple, Ethan and Hila who put out silly, funny videos, but also some that tell more serious stories of things that happened in their life. The video is titled "We Used to be Drug Dealers" and details an experience the two had some years ago when their finances were in such bad shape that they resorted to selling marijuana. Still not completely sure of where Sundol's skill level lies, I left the closed captions on throughout the video.  I picked the video mainly because: 

-The story is told in a casual manner, littered with swear words and commonly-used expressions 

-English is spoken in two different accents, with Ethan's California accent and Hila's Israeli accent 

-The speech of each story-teller contains complex sentences, yet is spoken at a deliberate enough speed for my student's skill-level   

We watched the video all the way through, and then I had some context-based questions prepared to ask Sundol to make sure he understood what the pair talked about in the video, which he answered almost flawlessly. I took this as a sign that if I do a similar exercise next time, I might want to leave the captions off so that he can focus better on just listening, since it was probably too easy for him.  

I also prepared a transcript of sections of the video with blanks on some of the words for Sundol to fill in. I also prepared a vocabulary sheet, stocked with plenty of different variations of four-lettered words used in the video.

Corbin Ryan: Tutor Session with Sundol #1

I met Sundol for the first time at a Starbucks on Tennessee Street. I devoted our first meeting to gauging his skill level in English, as well as getting an idea of what and where he wanted to improve. Sundol is from South Korea, and pursues an American degree in Chemical Engineering. The main thing he said he wanted to improve was his listening skills, because he needs to be able to understand what the instructors and professors are saying when he finally gets admitted into a university in this country. Specifically, he expressed that he wishes to better comprehend longer, more complicated, multi-idea sentences, as opposed to shorter, one-idea sentences. I asked him what kinds of English-language movies and TV show he watches to figure out what kind of listening practice he has already had, and he said he's into American Crime dramas, like CSI. So, with that, I will definitely center the first listening activity around something that requires a comparable, yet more difficult skill level.   

Sundol's pronunciation has plenty of room for improvement, so that's definitely something to consider in putting together my lesson plans. There are many sounds and words he uses that are difficult to understand, specifically the "L" sound, which, as I've learned from the TEFL course, is very often the case South Koreans have when they begin learning English. 

In regards to writing, Sundol seems confident, but did mention that he only wants to gear his writing towards what the TOEFL requires. When it comes to reading, he said he is only interested and has only attempted to read science journals on chemical engineering. 

Corbin Ryan: Tutoring Session with Christian #3

            I was very pleased to find that Christian’s grasp of the English alphabet continues to improve. In transcribing the alphabet, asked for a lot less help, only looking to me when he couldn’t remember maybe five or ten letters. As I’ve mentioned in my other posts, Christian tends to write some (maybe five or six) of his letters backwards. For example, I have seen him write N’s, Q’s, and Z’s backwards, although in this third session, he only wrote his N backwards, and as soon as I pointed out the N he crossed out the backwards one and drew a proper one.

            This session, I tried to teach Christian the sound each letter makes. To do this, I ran through each letter, writing it down, and then saying and writing a word that that letter begins with. He was able to provide me with a word for half the alphabet’s letters. The other half, though, he seemed either confused or not paying attention. Either way, I need to create or find a more concise and entertaining activity so that he will learn faster, as well as not associate this knowledge with the discouragement of learning it.

            For the latter activity, Christian’s mother was watching over her son and I as we worked together. She distracted him a few times, interjecting in Swahili. If I find this to be a problem, I will make sure to shut it down.

            I checked out some children’s story books (Curious George, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, etc.) from the Tallahassee Library for our next tutoring session. The idea is that the stories as well as the books’ pictures will help keep Christian’s attention as well as provide a context for the letters and words I’m trying to teach him.      

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.       

Corbin Ryan: Tutoring Session with Christian #1

            We all met at Sifa and Innocent’s house last Wednesday for our first tutoring session with the boys. Colleen began an activity with Christian, my student whom I have been assigned to, in which he was supposed to match words to the letter they began with. She was very encouraging with the children, and had a way of interacting with them that I definitely must work on myself if I continue teaching children in the future. In this, I have yet another skill to hone as I continue the TEFL course.

            What I expected to be just a meeting between my classmates, the students, and the students’ parents turned into a lesson. I was unprepared for this, but I got some practice in teaching nonetheless. Learning from how Colleen taught Christian, I improvised a few activities for him, one involving matching numerals to the words that represent them, another requiring him to write out the name of a color above a line of the same color.

            Colleen said to focus on numbers, colors, as well as the students’ immediate world all while familiarizing them with the letters of the English alphabet, which they already seem to have a grasp on, so that’s good. She pointed out that the boys have pretty short attention spans, so perhaps I will give Christian a five-minute break in the middle of our lessons, to give him some time to recuperate. She also pointed out that the boys, like many children will resort to guessing the answers so that they can get the activity over with as soon as possible, which I noticed Christian doing.

            Something else I found was that children are pretty easy to read; it’s easy to tell what they’re feeling. From looking at their body movements and what their attention is drawn to, it’s very obvious to tell when they’ve mentally checked out of the lesson at hand.