Toylene TS#2


My second tutoring session with my little guy was refreshing.  Since he likes animals, we began our session by discussing the differences between the turtle and tortoise.  From the picture cards, I presented, he was able to verbalize the differences immediately.  However, when presented with something new, he impressed me when he said, "that's impressive."  He was referring to the fact that the tortoise can grow as long as 5 feet.  That's definitely not a word typically used by a first grader.  Next, we reviewed the first grade sight-words.  He apparently reviewed the words missed from our previous session, and now those words are apart of his known pile.  To challenge him a little, I added 5 new words from the final row of words.  There are 10 rows of 20 words.  He knows 56 out of 60 consistently from the first 3 rows. Hopefully, when he sees these words in context, they will still be "a known".  Then, we did a reading fluency exercise to check how many words he reads correctly in a minute on a first grade reading page (cold-read).  Seeing his mistakes was an eye opener for him.  He tends to misread because for him, time, not accuracy was the focus; therefore, he said what ever came to mind regarding the first sound.  So, we reviewed his missed words.  Again, he impressed me with his rule knowledge.  He said, "when there are two consonants side by side, the final consonant is silent."  So, he knows some rules, he just has to apply them consistently.  Finally, we closed with  him sharing with his mother what he learned about the chipmunks from our discussion.  He was very dramatic when telling her about how it is a clean animal because its burrow has compartments, and that it has a compartment for its trash. By the way, all this took place at Books-A-Million.  Although, he was somewhat distracted by the activity around us, he attended quite well.