Last Sunday I met for the fifth time with PJ, my child tutee. This was a Sunday after PJ had a week of school, so I could already tell that he was more into the learning groove than he was last week (he was just coming off a week of spring break). I started with a few questions about his week to lower the affective filter and we started a reading activity.
Again, I found it a lot easier to simply read back and forth, paragraph to paragraph. This way, I can read in a more exciting tone, which gets PJ to kind of match the tone of the story when it is his turn to read. This reading exercise was followed by a cause and effect worksheet that was attached to the activity (the lion roared, which caused _____, (the mouse to leave)).
I found this exercise to be extremely helpful, as it highlighted the need to analyze a story for cause and effect relationships. After the close reading, I was able to give PJ hints as to what happened in the story that didn't entirely give away the answer, but challenged him to go back and read the appropriate parts. This will definitely prepare younger students for reading based exercises they will encounter in the future.
We finished up by doing a writing exercise about the Australian Emu, where a paragraph was introduced and students were encouraged to shorten it, and that was all. I liked the writing exercise in the sense that it gave me the opportunity to introduce the concept of coordinating conjunctions to PJ. I am looking forward to the next lesson.
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