Woo-Joo TP 10 (John Vaught)

In our last session I had shown Woo-Joo a TED talk video concerning how video games could make the world a better place. I did not like the thesis but it was an entertaining concept, one that Woo-Joo really liked. I had assigned him an essay which reacquired him to think about the concepts presented in the video and how he, given the responsibility to design a game, would implement them. At the time of our tutoring he gave me his essay which was roughly a paragraph long. I was initially disappointed but then thought that I could scrap  my original lesson plan and to instead focus on how to write a standard 5 paragraph FCAT style essay. I tried to work with what he brought in, which ultimately served as a decent introduction.

The prompt I came up with was simple and would serve the purpose of teaching Woo-Joo how to prepare an outline
My Prompt: You have been tasked to create a game by the speaker of the Ted video. She has requested that you come up with a game idea utilizing the principles covered in the lecture. Think of a game you would like to create and explain how this game would foster urgent optimism, social fabric, blissful productivity, and epic meaning.

The video had designed these concepts and beforehand I had led woo-joo to define these terms in his own words using examples from the presentation. He was able to derive that urgent optimism is the feeling that something can be accomplished, social fabric is cooperation being fostered, blissful productivity means doing something happily, and epic meaning which means an adventure. So we went down the list of terms thinking of examples of how his game applied. This gave him the opportunity to do most of the speaking. He would make a statement about how his game would require that people work together. I would ask how. He would then proceed to explain that characters individually were weak and needed help. I then asked him to illustrate an instance of this.


This type of interrogation went on for the rest of the lesson. Woojoo was able to craft a decent outline. I assigned him the task of completing the essay over the course of the week. I also told his mom this so that she would remind him. We then spoke about the Hobbit and Woojoo continued to tell me his appreciation for that book. He did mention difficulty with a particular chapter in which the Dwarves hold a long conversation. He said that he could not keep track of the characters. I told him that that was a common complaint for I have had the same problem too because there really isn't much character development besides Bilbo, Gandalf, and Thorin. We ended the lesson with me giving him a worksheet with 10 arbitrary PSAT vocab words.