Planning Lessons, Again...

 Planning, planning, planning. Tutoring work takes a lot of planning. Especially when I've got three different age groups and two different subjects. I decided that it would be easier to have the kids all play the same game on Mondays, when I tutor three of them in reading and writing. I always start out our lesson with having the student read their growing word list, or having them read sight words on flash cards. Then they read from a book at their reading level, and I write down any words they had a hard time pronouncing, to add to their word list. Then comes the learning game. I usually plan a different game for each student for Mondays, but the last two weeks I've had them play the same game (word spelling ball toss one week, and the cup game the other week). Next week I'm going to try and have all of the kids play word/number Bingo. It's harder because I made the Bingo cards myself, and I only have two double-sided ones. So that means two different kids can play against me on the same day. I just need to get more sheets of cardboard...

What I've really been planning this past week is helping the six-year-old girls I tutor learn not only sight words, but how to sound out words. I'm a member of Hooked on Phonics monthly, so I get learning booklets every month that teach things like how to pronounce blends - ch, bl, etc. I review the previous week's lesson before moving on to the next one. Then at the end of the workbook, there is a review of everything they've gone over in the whole book. I've been having the six-year-olds read Bob Books, and now one of them is ready to move on to reading first grade reading books, and sounding out words, using the skill she's been learning and recognizing her sight words!