Teaching and tutoring
Sep. 17th, 2024 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maeve66Working with one of my eighth grade students, Samaa is so fun, no matter what I am teaching her. She is avid to learn, and even though her skills are not the highest (iReady diagnostic pegged her reading at the third grade level, for two reasons, I think: 1) she's an English Learner, and 2) she has little exposure to text and avoids reading ... and doesn't go to the library, or read the books I've given her... she prefers videos -- K-dramas, C-dramas, and now T (Thai)-dramas -- and iReady pegged her math skills at the first grade level, some of which may also be due to ELL issues) she WANTS to learn and is not bored by things.
Today we were continuing with back to basics grammar (I have jettisoned those stupid grammar drill sheets I used as a crutch last year) -- we'd reviewed Parts of Speech, but now I am connecting those to building blocks of sentences. I want Samaa to be able to identify each part of speech in a sentence, so that when I tell her to build a sentence using at least two nouns, a pronoun, an adjective, a past tense verb, a conjunction and a preposition, she'll be able to do it. After color coding the PoS (shades of Montessori instruction, though I don't really know much about that and should look it up), I gave her three topics and said she should write one sentence, any sentence, about each. (Topics, two of which she suggested because she did not want to do two of the ones I had come up with -- the election, and Gaza*: fruit; next weekend; and K-dramas). All three of her sentences were perfectly grammatical utterances (with one misplaced word, because of ELL). Then she painstakingly, bit by bit, underlined each part of speech in the associated color, with help. Then I asked her to figure out which two PoS EVERY sentence MUST have. She guessed an article first (I think because they are so ubiquitous) but then corrected herself to a verb and a noun. So we made up a ton of two word sentences with nouns (people, animals, and things) and pronouns, and a verb. Finally, I showed her the most basic first step of sentence diagramming. She was able to correctly figure out where to divide each of her three earlier sentences.
* My sister likes to eat a lot of apples. -- divided between sister and likes
* Next weekend I'm going with my mom, shopping. -- divided (with help because of the contraction) between I and am going
* My friend told me about a new K-drama and I am going to watch it. -- divided between friend and told
Because I was late (boo -- I had to waste time this morning using my final [more than a year past expiry] Covid test because I have a wretched sore throat, which was RQ's first symptom a couple of weeks ago when she got it) this took up all of our time and we had to plan how she could do one hour of math iReady at home and use one of the Thursday hours on Social Studies instead, with me.
I fucking love small group or one-on-one instruction. It's where I began with teaching, at Evanston Township High School's STAE -- Steps Towards Academic Excellence program, which is what finally pushed me to become a teacher instead of a professor.
*She has written plenty about Gaza, in horror and anger and sorrow. Almost every one of her weekly Current Events assignments is on an article on Gaza.
ETA: Two hours later -- Samaa and her mother just stopped by with a Yemeni feast for my lunch -- something like Greek pastitsio with cinnamon and ground beef or lamb and macaroni; some roast chicken; saffron rice and a yogurt sauce for eating it with, and a salad. I was not expecting that.
Today we were continuing with back to basics grammar (I have jettisoned those stupid grammar drill sheets I used as a crutch last year) -- we'd reviewed Parts of Speech, but now I am connecting those to building blocks of sentences. I want Samaa to be able to identify each part of speech in a sentence, so that when I tell her to build a sentence using at least two nouns, a pronoun, an adjective, a past tense verb, a conjunction and a preposition, she'll be able to do it. After color coding the PoS (shades of Montessori instruction, though I don't really know much about that and should look it up), I gave her three topics and said she should write one sentence, any sentence, about each. (Topics, two of which she suggested because she did not want to do two of the ones I had come up with -- the election, and Gaza*: fruit; next weekend; and K-dramas). All three of her sentences were perfectly grammatical utterances (with one misplaced word, because of ELL). Then she painstakingly, bit by bit, underlined each part of speech in the associated color, with help. Then I asked her to figure out which two PoS EVERY sentence MUST have. She guessed an article first (I think because they are so ubiquitous) but then corrected herself to a verb and a noun. So we made up a ton of two word sentences with nouns (people, animals, and things) and pronouns, and a verb. Finally, I showed her the most basic first step of sentence diagramming. She was able to correctly figure out where to divide each of her three earlier sentences.
* My sister likes to eat a lot of apples. -- divided between sister and likes
* Next weekend I'm going with my mom, shopping. -- divided (with help because of the contraction) between I and am going
* My friend told me about a new K-drama and I am going to watch it. -- divided between friend and told
Because I was late (boo -- I had to waste time this morning using my final [more than a year past expiry] Covid test because I have a wretched sore throat, which was RQ's first symptom a couple of weeks ago when she got it) this took up all of our time and we had to plan how she could do one hour of math iReady at home and use one of the Thursday hours on Social Studies instead, with me.
I fucking love small group or one-on-one instruction. It's where I began with teaching, at Evanston Township High School's STAE -- Steps Towards Academic Excellence program, which is what finally pushed me to become a teacher instead of a professor.
*She has written plenty about Gaza, in horror and anger and sorrow. Almost every one of her weekly Current Events assignments is on an article on Gaza.
ETA: Two hours later -- Samaa and her mother just stopped by with a Yemeni feast for my lunch -- something like Greek pastitsio with cinnamon and ground beef or lamb and macaroni; some roast chicken; saffron rice and a yogurt sauce for eating it with, and a salad. I was not expecting that.