Greg - TP Child - Session 1

Last Friday evening, I met with my child tutee, P.J.  He is a 7 year old who turns 8 in December.  I believe you all know his mother, Ms. Kim. : ) As you may remember from class, P.J.'s home is Korean language territory, and school is English territory.  This allows P.J. to have the benefits of developing both languages while experiencing the struggles of slower acquisition of various skills, such as vocabulary and reading/listening comprehension.

P.J.'s English language skills are under the watchful eyes of Ms. Kim, so she already knew his focus for our sessions needed to be vocabulary and reading/listening comprehension.  When I arrived, I met P.J. and followed him to his bedroom.  Ms. Kim provided the resources based on his needs.  Our environment, though a bedroom, still had a little of the tone of formality...teacher, student, desk, books.

P.J. was alert.  He had not had school that day to drain his brain.  We enjoyed light conversation about himself, and then we began our study of coins, bills, and their names and value.  Using an English language picture book, we went through all of the coins and bills once, without spending a lot of time on each.  I wanted to find out where his problems were.  I discovered there where several struggles to name the coin or bill, and there was a confusion of using the value as the name ("That is a one cent" instead of "That is a penny").  We discussed the difference between coins (metal) and bills (paper), and between their names (nickel) and values (5 cents).

We practiced, practiced, practiced.  But our type of practice varied.  I tried to break the formality by getting us on the floor.  I had him dump his jar of coins on the floor so we could touch them and see they didn't all look exactly like the pictures in the book. (This was causing problems because, as you know, Nickels, for example, sometimes enlarge the image of the president, and sometimes it shows a bust of the president.)

Using the coins he had problems with, we would throw them from hand to hand saying, "quarter, quarter, quarter" with each pass.  Once I flipped a coin and he was fascinated and wanted to learn how.  I taught him, and then told him he had to say the name of the coin before flipping it.  We also put the penny, nickel, dime and quarter on the desk by his bed with a homework assignment. When he went to bed that night, he was to sit there and flip each coin, first saying their names.

We got back off the floor (transition), and I presented him with three books.  I asked him to make the choice on which we would read.  I explained to him I wanted him to listen to the story until I (or he) stopped reading (we alternated), and then I wanted him to tell me in his own words what had happened in the story.  I explained that I was going to pour some glue into his brain so the words would stick as we read them.  The only way they would be able to get out of his brain would be though his mouth when he told me what he heard.  I acted out pouring the glue and asked if he was ready.  He smiled and said yes.  Each time his focus shifted, we poured more glue.  We read "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer."  It was his first time.  He did well, but there is much room for improvement due to vocabulary and focus.

Any ideas out there on how to do reading/listening comprehension in ways that are fun and keep kids focused?

Greg