Nunez - TS #16

3/10/2017, 7:00-8:15PM  
Alphabet/letters practice & sense verbs

     During our previous sessions, I noticed that Rebecca and her siblings don't really make the connection between letters, sounds, and words. One example of this was last time when I listed the days of the week on my whiteboard and erased one of them (let's say I erased Saturday) so that they could tell me which day was missing. Rebecca said "Monday." So I pointed to Monday and asked "What does this say?" to try to get her to realize that Monday was already there. I tried to sound out the word with her, but then she said "Wednesday." So I pointed to the letter "M" and asked "What letter is this?" and she said practically every letter except "M." The kids can read and write for the most part, but when I recited the alphabet with them they had some trouble. I really didn't know how to work on this with them, especially since they're at different levels and I had to find something to do that would include all of them. I ended up making a PowerPoint. It went from A-Z. Starting with the first, each odd numbered slide said "A is for..., B is for..., S is for..., etc." The next slide would have a word and a picture to complete the slide before it, like "sisters." I asked them to write down the words and circle each time the letter appeared in the word. Every few slides I would try (emphasis on try) getting the kids to tell me which letter would come next, or to give me a word starting with the next letter.
      I asked the kids if they remembered their body parts, by pointing to my ears, nose, mouth, etc. After reviewing that, I went to the next slide, which had an image of animated eyes. I asked "What's that," to which they responded, "eyes." I clicked the slide and the word appeared under the image. I clicked the slide again to show an image of an an animated monkey looking through binoculars. Then I asked "What do we use our eyes for?" They didn't understand the question (I didn't expect them to), so I demonstrated by moving my eyes around the room and gesturing outward with my hands. I repeated the question. "See" was the only one they guessed correctly without me giving them the answer. I came with the expectation that they wouldn't know any of the sense verbs, so I was relieved that the kids knew at least one already. After the slides, I had them demonstrate each new term for me. I would say something like "what do we do with our hands?" while gesturing to my hands and touching random objects on the table, and the kids would respond with "touch." This took a lot of repetition but by the end of the session, the kids were able to demonstrate each of the sense verbs to me as I said them.
 

Paula CP#6

Conversation Partner: Yushan

February 24, 2017 

5:00pm-6:00pm

Park 

This was the last session for the conversation partner. Yushan was babysitting a puppy, so we took it to the park. We walked around and talked about what we were going to do during Spring Break and the difference between vacationing in China and in America. We also got coffee since it was late on a Friday and we were both tired of the long week. Most of the conversation was on how our week was and what we were going to do on the following weekend. It was a really nice walk. 

Paula CP#5

Conversation Partner: Yushan 

February 23, 2017 

7:30pm-9:30pm

Lake Ella  

We meet once again at Lake Ella for food truck thursdays. Since last time we were not able to get hispanic plantains, we took advantage this time that they had some and we bought them. She was able to taste some of my own personal culture and one of my favorite foods. This day was the last day of TEFL, so many of my other classmates were also at Lake Ella. We talked, had food, walked and listen to the live music. It was a nice experience because we were able to see everyone from class,but outside on a different environment. Yushan got the chance to talk to my other classmates and she really like that. 

Nunez - TS #15

3/09/2017, 5:30 - 6:30 PM

     Naty and I met in front of Strozier because the weather was beautiful today. Since we barely scratched the surface last time, I made a worksheet to help her understand how prepositions change the meaning of many verbs. I included terms like "give up, give out, give away, get to, get out, get away, etc." For each term, I wrote an example sentence and then the definition. (ex. Give up: "You've worked so hard for this... don't give up now!" = to quit; stop trying) We read the sentence together and if she was still confused about the definition I explained it in more detail. Then Naty came up with her own sentence for each one.
     Next, we worked on the past simple and past progressive until it was time to walk to the cinema. I drew a chart with verbs in the left column, a blank middle column for the past simple, and a blank right column for the past continuous. For each verb, we came up with & wrote down a sentence for both tenses. The difficulty for her is when the tenses are combined in one sentence, so I gave her a couple formulas like "walk... when... see," for which she had to create a sentence using both past simple and past continuous. Something like "I was walking (PC) when I saw (PS) the accident." I was happy to see her improve the more we practiced.

Nunez - CP #6

 3/09/2017, 7:00 - 9:30 PM

After our tutoring session, we walked over to the Askew Student Cinema to see Elle. It was an interesting movie about a woman who tries to track down the man who broke into her house and attacked her. It was about two hours long but Naty & I both agreed that it was worth the time. Walking back to my car and on the way to drop her home, Naty and I talked about our own experiences in scary situations and what we would do if something like that happened to us. Even though this was our last official conversation partner meeting, we have already made plans to hang out after spring break.

Kersten TS #16

On Wednesday, March 8, I met with my adult tutee Xiaoyu at 3:30pm in Dirac library. She had to read more of her article that we went over the previous day, but while we were going over the parts she didn’t understand, the topic of pronunciation came up. She said she had a hard time pronouncing the word snack because she would sometimes accidentally pronounce it snake. I told her some rules on pronunciation. In most cases, for simple words, if a word has a vowel and ends in a consonant, the vowel is pronounced with the short sound. But if there is a vowel in the word, and the word also ends in a vowel, then the first vowel is pronounced with a long sound. She didn’t know what the short and long vowel sounds were, so I went over each of them for each letter. I then pulled up a list of example words online and asked her to read through them. Her pronunciations were great, but I noticed she had a problem pronouncing the short “I” sound. For example, she would pronounce the word “mint” as “meent” because she kept pronouncing the short “I” sound as a long “e” sound. I went over the correct pronunciations with her until she got the hang of it, and told her to work on it over spring break.

Kersten TS #15

On Tuesday, March 7, at 4:30-5:30pm I met up met with my adult tutee Xiaoyu in Dirac library. She told me she has to lead a discussion in her class because her teacher is having every one of her students lead a discussion on different topics. Xiaoyu’s topic is medical marijuana. She didn’t know how to present her discussion so I gave her a general outline she could use. She already had her own outline, so I just gave her pointers on where to go next. The outline we worked out together was to first introduce the topic of medical marijuana and define it. Then to give more background information about it, such as how marijuana is grown and how long it has been used medicinally. Then she would say the advantages and disadvantages associated with medical marijuana, and based on the information she gives, then hold a class discussion on whether the use of medical marijuana should be allowed or not. Finally, based on the class’ overall opinion on the topic, she will come to a conclusion.