P.J. and I changed up our schedule and had a morning tutoring session. Our subjects for the day were reading comprehension from a book about the moon, sun, and earth, as well as from a math book with word problems. In the first case, comprehension was tested by having him answer simple questions on a couple of pages worth of content, or by having him retell something. In the second case, comprehension was measured by P.J. being able to solve the word problems.
P.J.'s comprehension was good with the book about the moon. He seemed to stay focused longer because of his high interest in the subject. In the past, we have read imaginary books - fables, Santa Clause and reindeer, etc. Those didn't hold his attention the way the book dealing with facts and science did. His intrinsic motivation kicked in, I guess. It was much easier to dialogue on this book than it was with ole Saint Nic.
Math was another subject he seemed to enjoy. When the word problem included more than two steps, it was a little hard for him to solve - not due to the math, but due to the English. He had NO problem doing math in his head. He even told me he likes doing it in his head. However, I had to have him do it on paper to see if he was breaking down the word problem in a logical way from the wording. For example, some problems said things like: 2 people needed 22 apples, one had 7, and the other had 5. How many more do they need altogether? When I would ask, "How many apples do they need altogether?", he couldn't differentiate that question from the question "How many MORE do they need altogether. His mind would get focused on one thing (the end of the problem, in this case). When asking what their goal was, he would still answer the number for how many they lacked instead of giving the number for the total required.
He's a future science, facts, and numbers guy. When it comes to word problems with math, I need an MFL tutor (Math as a foreign language).
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