Bobby_TP_#2

Yesterday I had my second tutoring session with P.J. This time we didn’t have as much to work on as we did on the first occasion, so we finished a bit early. His homework included a few reading comprehension questions about the short book Pocahontas and a speed reading exercise. P.J. really wasn’t in the mood to do his homework or to read Pocahontas, but after some minor protests we began. We took a look at the questions that were asked for reading comprehension then began to read. P.J. had the bright idea of us taking turns reading the pages. This worked well because having him read every single page would have been numbingly boring for both of us. I would stop periodically to ask him to explain what was happening up to the point that we read and to ask him to check if we could answer any of the questions at that time. Once we finished reading we began trying to answer the questions. Admittedly, I had to guide P.J. to more thoughtful responses that the ones he gave (prompting words like fairly instead of nice and thoughtful instead of good). I’m not sure if I goaded him toward answers that were a bit of a stretch for him or if he was just being intractable, but he realized the ideas I was indicating with my questioning after a little while. The questions I asked were in line with the Socratic Method and I tried to make my hypothetical situations and examples easy to understand and relevant. After trudging through Pocahontas we did a quick timed speed reading which was a lot more fun because we treated it more like a game. For the next tutoring session I will be preparing my own material to bring before P.J., so I have to create something that incorporates the two things that I learned he likes: booby-traps and Minecraft.