Rachael TS#12

Today (2/28), I had a breakthrough with my 4-year old Korean tutee, Matthew. My goals were 1) to get him to speak in complete sentences (he was previously only doing 1-2 word sentences) and 2) to make the lesson as fun as possible. I printed out some Guess Who sheets out, then stuck them in sheet protectors to make dry-erase game boards. He was very shy at the beginning, but as soon as I brought up the game he instantly warmed up. My only two rules for the game was that you must speak in complete sentences and that the questions must be yes or no only. I emphasized that they don't have to be perfect and that we're going to correct any mistakes together. I gave two examples, "Does your monster (instead of faces, at first the guess who was with cute monsters) have 2 eyes?," and "Is your monster green?" This was the first time I heard him speak in full sentences. To encourage him, I let him win most of the time. Next, we played another version, with the regular guess who characters. He was encouraged to ask questions that pertain to more normal features of humans (age, hair color, wears glasses/hat, eye color, facial hair, etc). He did a great job and learned some vocabulary along the way. The next activity I had him do involved prepositions (on, in, behind, in front of, next do, under). I had a printout of several pictures of dogs in relation to a doghouse. This was too easy for him, so we went around the basement and did some TPR (sit on the couch, go under the table, stand behind the couch, put the shoe in the drawer). I had him give me instructions too, it really made him laugh when I went under the table! We finished by taking some of the scrabble letters and having him make and sound out small words. It was really successful!!

Next time, I'd like to prepare another fun, active game that gets him speaking. I'm thinking about doing a printout of that one rug we all had as children to talk about different kinds of buildings. It would also be good to start working a little bit on writing, too. I can see he can read a little bit, so we are going to practice having him reading more. Perhaps taking turns between pages.

This tutoring session was particularly encouraging, I'm looking forward to meeting with his mom tomorrow for Conversation Partners!