Nunez TS #5, 7, 9

2/03/2017, Friday at 7:00 - 8:00 PM
Diagnostics
     I was nervous about my first tutoring session with Rebecca, but it turned out much better than I expected. After introducing myself to her and her family, we sat down and I tried to gauge how much she already knew. She knows the alphabet and how to write, but she can't produce sentences. She knows very high-frequency words like basic food terms, animals, "boy, girl, man, woman," etc. She had difficulty responding to the questions I asked her, but I think it was partly because she was shy.

2/10/2017, Friday at 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Body parts, feelings, colors
     I had a feeling that Rebecca's brothers and sisters would want to join this time, so I brought enough colored pencils and printed some fruit coloring worksheets. We went over the color of each pencil and identified the fruits. Then we wrote down the term and what color it should be. For example, I pointed to the apple and asked "what fruit is this?" and "what color is an apple?" Then I gestured to the colored pencils and asked them to pick the red ones to color the fruit. They seemed to like the coloring exercise so I might do that again as a way to keep the younger kids engaged while I try to focus on Rebecca.
     The primary focus of the session was teaching body parts. First I pointed to the parts of my body to see if they knew the words. I had Rebecca and her siblings mimic my words and movements as I gestured to my nose, head, eyes, arms, etc. I printed an animated character and asked Rebecca to label the body parts accordingly. I wrote the words on sticky notes and had the kids attach them to me or each other, kind of like the human version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey.

2/17/2017, Friday at 7:00 - 8:30 PM
Family & days of the week
     I showed Rebecca and her siblings pictures of my family and described how each person was related to me. I asked Rebecca to tell me how everyone in the room was related to her as I gestured to each person. Then I had her do some matching worksheets (ex. draw a line from the picture of the mother holding her baby to the word "mother.")
     I asked the kids if they knew their days of the week. They had a good start until they got to Thursday, which they find difficult to pronounce. I listed the days of the week on my whiteboard and after I erased a day I asked them which one was missing. I had Rebecca write in the missing days herself so that she could work on her writing & spelling. We did this until I had erased each day at least once. We did some more exercises on paper and I concluded by reviewing the family terms and the body parts from last time.