Bobby - TP_child 2

There are several reasons why I like tutoring Jun:

• he's smart as a whip, and enjoys trying to trick me
• I like to believe that he really likes learning
• his mom is so appreciative...and gives me yummy Korean food :)

In all seriousness, working with Jun has been a really great experience so far. Today, we worked briefly on contractions before reading through a book on which he has a test tomorrow. At first, I could tell he'd seen contractions before, but he couldn't tell me what they were. I explained several common ones to him: were vs. we're, there vs. their vs. they're, and words of possession (for this, I used his name: "Jun's"). I explained that using contractions makes speech more conversational, whereas the full phrase would make speech more formal. I asked him to fill out a worksheet that I designed. There were 7 multiple choice questions for him to answer, and after going through each statement, he was able to answer most of them perfectly. We went over those that he didn't get on the first try, but I think he got the gist of it.

After this, we read through a "chapter book" that he will be tested on tomorrow. It was from the Magic Treehouse book series. The premise was that two young children ("master librarians"...what great role models!) are somehow allowed to time travel to the Ancient city of Pompeii on the night of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius so that they can recover a book for someone named Morgan. Why Morgan would send these children on such a daunting and terrifying mission is beyond me, but alas, Jun seemed to like it. He read through the first five chapters, carefully but surely, and only stumbled on a few understandably difficult words such as "amphitheater", "Vesuvius", "tunic", and "cackled." I asked him comprehension questions at the end of each chapter. He had already read the book earlier today, so he got most of them right! I know he's going to do well on his test.

Next week, I plan to work on determiners and (fingers crossed) eat an insane amount of kimchi.