Nickie TP1

My hunt for tutoring partners is finally coming together! Better late than never. :)

I contacted Karen at the library in Tallahassee after 4 solid weeks of failure contacting anyone in Bay county's literacy program. Karen was very helpful. I explained that my studies only brought me to Tallahassee on Tuesday's and Thursday's. There is a tutoring session from 1:30-2:30 on Tuesday's and Thursdays that she said I could help out with.

So I crashed Christine's tutoring session from 1:30-2:30 yesterday. She explained to me that the group changes constantly since its not a requirement to show up. We discussed different issues with this changing dynamic, and how to plan lessons that will work for the class. This particular class 6 students showed up. She printed out a short story from the library's ESL resources that included several pages on comprehension questions in different formats about the reading. She said she'd show me the around the rooms & resources next time & informed me that Karen was a wealth of knowledge and a big help with lesson planning. I must admit, I'm regretting not talking to Karen first and tutoring in Tallahassee. So FYI, if there's any Bay county students in the TEFL certificate program in the future, there's not much happening here for ESL, and it's totally worth the drive to Tally to work with Karen.
Back to the lesson, the group size of 6 was great. Everyone took turns reading aloud. Christine and I didn't correct any pronunciation errors that were small. Fellow students helped each other with pronunciations instead. There was really only one word in the story that presented a big challenge, colonel. After the story was read, students were asked if any vocabulary was unfamiliar that they'd like defined. We discussed vocabulary and then students were set free to work on the first round of multiple choice questions individually.  We discussed answers as a group. Everyone in the group seemed to be intermediate to advanced, so the activities went smoothly. We completed multiple choice, general questions listing a line reference to the story, matching, vocabulary with a word bank, changing statements to questions using pronouns, and comparison of adverbs and adjectives.  Christine and I discussed the next session's lesson being the second 1/2 of the same story, but creating more challenging activities for the students as they breezed through today's. This is also a difficult problem, as the students may change next week. :)

I'm thankful to be able to sit in more of a classroom tutoring with a small group. She said the size ranges from 3-10 students. I look forward to meeting with them next week.