Ben TS #1

Date/Time: Aug 31 5 PM

Location: Shukuru’s House

Topic/Skill: Getting to know you

I was paired with an East African refugee. His name is Shukuru, he is 11 years old and is a 6th grader. I had planned to use my first lesson to form a bond and ask the “Getting to know you” questions found in the tutoring packet. However, upon meeting Shukuru for the first time I quickly learned that his English was not at the level of being able to understand the majority of the questions. I was able to learn that he is from Tanzania and liked football and music. I had to some improvisation because I had not anticipated correctly his level of English. I decided to try and learn more about his knowledge of vocabulary so I used my phone to go over pictures of animals with him. Many he did not know, but he was able to identify a “snake.” We then went over the alphabet and numbers which he could recite in order; “ABCD… 1234” but he wasn’t able to identify individual letters and numbers. He seems like a really great kid and is enthusiastic to learn. It will certainly be a challenge because of the language barrier and many of the questions that would like to ask him are difficult to phrase in a way that he understands. I plan to focus on learning the alphabet in future lessons as a precursor to learning to read. I will also focus on basic vocabulary in order to build his speaking listening and writing skills. I will need to do a little bit of research on what to teach when teaching the very basics of English.