Craig_CO_#2

Today I observed Ms. Wagner's foundations speaking class. Leslie's class was composed mostly of Arabic speakers and it seemed like a real challenge to keep the students from conversing with each other in their native tongue. Leslie started the class with a quiz. The quiz had two main sections: an error correction section and a section where the students were required match words from a word bank to small diagrams.

The main lesson was about money. Leslie described how to write money(using either the dollar sign or the cent sign) and different ways these can be said( one fifty, one dollar and fifty cents). She then wrote random amounts on the board and called on students to read the amounts to her.

After this the was an activity in which three items were presented (car, phone, shoes) and each student had to find three classmates and ask these students how much these items cost each of them.

Thoughts:
I think Leslie handled her classroom well, but i think it's very difficult for a young white women to control these young arab men. She implemented a strike system where each time she heard arabic she would give that student a tally mark. Three tally marks and the student would have one point deducted from final final class grade.

I think she could stand to be more strict in the classroom. I enjoyed her involvement of the class but it got out of hand at times, with students shouting the answer before the selected student could answer.

Nicky_TP_#16

12/3/14 TP 16

On Wednesday I spent my last tutoring session with Saja. We did not work on a lot of materials together except at the end of class I stayed after to watch her presentation for the end of the year final. Though during the class Leslie left me in charge while she gave oral exams in the hallway to her other students one at a time. This was a lot of fun. Though at first the other students did not ask me questions, as soon as I stood up to retrieve something from the front of the classroom, students began to bombard me with grammar questions. By the end of class they were asking if I was a teacher and what I taught. I told them I was currently not a teacher but would be one in the near future. As I made my way to the back of the classroom several students proceeded to exclaim, “new teacher!” This was really sweet and funny, and made me miss them all the more after I left. 

Bobby_TP_#15

On Tuesday after class I had my weekly session with P.J. This time the session took place at CIES, which really benefitted me because I was feeling particularly restless that day and relished the opportunity to use a room with not one but two white boards and plenty of space to excitedly walk around. I’m feeling that P.J. and I are beginning to form a healthy rapport. Once we started he quickly got over his initial tutoring blues. We started by working on his homework. I believe this went smoother than the tests we usually cover because there it felt like less of a critique of something he’d already taken and was forced to review and more like a productive, useful activity. I also think my ability to walk around the room rather than remain stuck in the chair next to him helped make finishing the homework more exciting. I eagerly made use of the whiteboard to draw graphics to help him with answering questions. After we finished the homework we went over the mistakes he’d made in two mini-magazines. I stressed the difference between “thinking questions” such as what is the main idea and the author would most likely agree with and “info questions” that could be found by scanning the reading. I hope that by being able to identify a specific type of question he can relate that to a corresponding answer strategy rather than seeing all questions as equal obstacles. We made it through these with ease, and I think P.J. actually enjoyed his time. 

Nicky_TP_#15

12/1/14 TP 15

    Yesterday was my last tutoring session with Mathew and David. I think I have a knack for teaching them now because it went really well. Though it was a little hard to originally round them up but once we started it was pretty easy to maintain the cooperation. We first worked on reading comprehension. David did his on his own but Mathew likes reading his out loud with me. After reading comprehension we worked on math which went fairly smoothly. Then we worked on their book report on De Soto. At the beginning of the session we also worked on vocabulary. Though when writing the vocabulary sentences down at first they were incorrect. But then I would make them say it out loud in a normal conversation. From there they would come to the answer on their own. They still have short attention spans but with proper motivation it was easier to manage them. Yesterday’s was that I would teach them some origami if we finished in time and we worked efficiently, so no talking unless it was a question about the homework.

    I will miss them, they are good kids. Also the mom was very put off that I will not be returning. Over all this was a great experience. I have become inducted into David and Mathew’s “cool kid club” as they were giving me tons of Pokémon trader cards on the way home. I just hope they make it through the rest of their school year without causing their mom too much stress.   

Nicky_TP_#14

12/1/14 TP 14

    Yesterday I worked with Saja at 1:00 pm in Leslie’s class. We started the class with my teaching evaluations. It was very hard explaining the definitions and concepts that the students were to write on the evaluation. It probably would have been better had they been a fill in the bubble evaluation. After this we worked on self-corrections for the lab we worked in last week. For the most part Saja was good on her own but every once in a while she would ask me why something was incorrect or if her correction was correct. Afterwards we worked on some interview questions for people in class. So Saja asked me what I ate everyday for breakfast, what I bought last week, etc. And then I did the same but for her. We finished earlier than the other students so I proceeded to ask her what she was going to do after the semester ends. I think she still thought it was a test question so she responded with her usual, “I will go to Saudi Arabia”. She asked me afterwards if I was going to be in class on Tuesday for her presentation. I said I could not, but it’s nice to know that she wanted me to be there. 

Bobby_TP_#14

This past Monday I met for the first time with one of my CIES tutees, Helal. Helal is from the United Arab Emirates. At 31 years old he is much older than any of the other CIES students that I've had as conversation partners or tutees. He has three children and a wife who studies childhood education. When I met Hilal at the Hecht House he had his books and notes from class on the table, but when I asked him what he wanted to go over in the tutoring session he implied that he mainly just wanted to speak with me. Based on his text messages I assumed he spoke English pretty well; he texted more fluently than anyone else from CIES did. When I we began to speak, however, it became clear that he is at a very basic speaking level. He told me about his camping trip to Georgia, about how he hunts rabbits in the desert with a falcon, and a little about his family, among other things. We had to resort to drawings, gestures, sound effects, and if all else failed translation in order to communicate. He would often mispronounce words or simply lack for them, so the conversation broke down quite frequently. I wrote a few words down along with the drawings (tent, deer, gun, bullet, scope) to help him remember them and tried to make corrections or suggestions when speaking became unintelligible or broken down. He invited me to play pool with him sometime and to meet his family. I would gladly oblige, since he seems to want an English speaking conversation partner to practice with, but I would also like to work with him on his homework and classwork in order to feel more satisfied as a tutor and see veritable proof of something being accomplished. 

Bobby_TP_#13

Last Monday I went over another reading test with P.J. All of his reading tests follow the same format. There are two short texts with accompanying relative questions and a final essay question for the students to answer based on those two texts. After the last tutoring session when I had my heart to heart with P.J. I was determined to make a breakthrough this time. I had the test and some reading material to cover, but I really wanted to focus on the test since P.J. always makes the same mistakes. I started by going through and getting him to answer the questions that didn't require another reading of the texts right away. We went through some vocabulary questions and some questions dealing with prefixes and suffixes before getting into the reading comprehension. The two questions that both texts have in common are something along the lines of, “Which sentence best summarizes the author’s opinion?” and “Based on the text, the author would most likely agree that”. It’s clear that P.J. isn't really soaking in what he’s reading because he misses these two types of question and leaves the essay portion almost blank on every test. After having him read the texts again and going through the rest of the questions he’d missed, I really tried to focus in on these two questions and the essay portion. I’d hoped that by examining those two aspects of the test with him I’d be able to make some ground. He did a little better, and seemed to take a few baby steps in the right direction. I gave P.J. a little more wiggle room for conversation and tangents this time so he wouldn't get so burnt out and frustrated with tutoring as he’d seemed to be getting, but by the end he was over it anyway and all he wanted to do was talk. This session I learned that it’s important to give the tutee a voice, even if they are a child, because if you can't see where they’re coming from it's a lot harder to get them where they need to go.