A World of Learning

 There's a boy that I tutor who is quite advanced in reading and spelling, so I decided to try how he did with grammar. I wrote down a story and purposely made a lot of grammatical errors, like not capitalizing words, adding commas where the didn't belong, leaving out apostrophes, and not putting quotation marks around something someone said. He had a bit of a harder time with it! We didn't even get through the whole one-page story with all of the other things we did. He'll have to finish it up next week. 😉 PS - we'll need to work on his neat handwriting next!

 She did it! One of the six-year-olds I tutor has finally read all of the Bob Books in my collection, and has been learning lists of words that are specific to a story called Squirrel's Fun Day by Lisa Moser. Well, she remembered all the words and was able to read almost every word from chapter one! She did a great job! She's also learning how to sound out letters and blends endings like -ch or beginnings ch- and br- and so on. She's learning fast! I'm so proud of her!  Here is a picture that the girl's mom snuck while I was working with her! I'm glad she did!

 It's the time of year for giving, which I love doing! I like to think of the special people in my life, and that includes the kids that I tutor! I found some bags of freeze-dried candy, like Skittles, and chose the sour ones for the boys and tropical fruit ones for the girls (I don't have a picture of Adalyn because her last tutoring session was cancelled). I'll try and get her gift to her soon. But I love the reactions the kids had when they saw what they got - they were all so happy! (Kids and candy!)  I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year! My next post will probably be next year! Have a great one! 

 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 a...

 When I'm working with a really young child who is just starting to learn to write, I write the letters out in dashes for the child to trace as they say the letter. After they have done this after two or three sessions, I have them write the letter freehand. Often, on their first couple of tries, it's a mess. They usually want help writing the letters, so I tell them to hold their pencil like they're going to write with it, then I hold their hand in mine and gently guide them while I describe the movements I'm making. It is sort of like the child is writing letters halfway between following the dashes and writing completely on their own. It gives them a boost of confidence when they see what they've written. "Look what I wrote!"

 I'm always trying to think of fun ways for my students to learn what I'm teaching them, whether it's reading and writing or math. One of the games I came up with is the "bean bag toss." It works great for spelling and math times tables. If I'm working with a beginning reader, I'll play together with them and we'll spell a word like "you." They'll start off with the bean bag and say the first letter, y, and throw me the bean bag. then I'll say the next letter, o, and throw it back to them. Then they finish off the word with the u. This works with one of my older students who is learning words like "psyche." We play it the same way, back and forth.  For math, the bean bag is used to count by a number, like counting by 3s or by 6s. The student and I take turns saying the numbers following each other (3,6,9,etc) until we've gotten really high. I did this with a 10-year-old recently and we were counting by 7s, and we made it...

 When working with younger children, for example the two six-year-olds that I tutor, I like to give them a "brain break." After working on their sight words and phonics, they read a "Bob Book." Then I use specially lined paper for younger writers with a blank space at the top for them to draw a picture. I encourage them to draw a picture that relates to the story they just read. After they draw the picture, I have them write a sentence about their picture. I like to give them about five minutes. I give them a one-minute warning. Then I say "time's up, you can finish your picture later." But sometimes the child will say "just one more thing" and that turns into "another thing." I show a little patience, but there has to be a stopping point to move on to the learning game/activity. This is when I simply move the paper out of reach and remind them they can finish it later, or tell them that it's time to put away the colored pencils...