Carlton TP #4

Second tutee session with third grade twin, DH,  American born of Korean parents. Monday, March 17, 6:30-7:30pm

We all meet at the main Library on Park Street. This time his mom brought a composition book and pencils, no homework. She asked to work on reading and writing today.



After introductions, I first asked him about last week. We reviewed the vocabulary words again, and I asked him to write his responses in his BEST handwriting. His writing is sloppy, and barely readable. He ignores lines and left to right organization. He had retained about half of the definitions. We corrected spelling also. He read a passage of his own writing to me also, making mistakes. Writing issues could be a real problem for him in English.

Next, we selected a book to read. He perused a familiar stack of Star Wars series picture books and could not find one he had not already read. He chose a Pokemon story instead. I thought this would not be very good because so much of these are repetitious "battles" and derived from the card game, with little plot content. However, it did hold his interest in reading. It was difficult to focus on pronunciation with this story because it is packed with invented proper names of characters, and silly fighting moves. But, I was surprised that DH did not recognize many of the vocabulary. It was also difficult to read the dialogue format. We focused on finding synonyms for strange words. The first one was "connoisseur", a difficult word for anyone. He guessed it sounded French, like "crochet" was last week, and we defined it as an expert and/or collector. Other, simpler unknown words were: "tuft" (clump of hair), "dodge" (avoid), "countered" (opposed), "hollered" (yelled), and so on. He became bored with the story about half way through and asked me if I had brought the puzzle. I had not.

We stopped reading. I had explored a few travel pages on Seoul and found that there was a new hands-on children's museum opened last year. I showed him the website and he recognized a nearby theme park he will visit. I suggested he could visit this place when he travels this summer. We talked briefly about Korea using a map until the time was up.

Bianca and I agreed that the boys should bring their school assignments each time, even if completed, so our time reinforces the homework and we can focus on English language skill support.