Ben - TP #11

Jason and I just finished another fantastic tutoring session in which we continued our exploration of Ancient Greek Mythology. I can't wait to find out how other students respond to material like that Greek Mythology. Jason absolutely loves it. He was very excited right from the beginning of the lesson to learn more about the twelve labors of Hercules. We only got through 1-4 during our last lesson so we had a lot of material to cover for this lesson. I started the class by going over the homework that I had given him from last week which was to come up with the rest of his list of things that he thinks are awesome. That actually got us into an interesting discussion of some of his favorite foods and why he liked them so much. Then he laid down some serious knowledge for me. I asked him what food he would eat if he could eat one food for the rest of his life. He told me he would eat seeds so that way he could plant them and make a variety of other foods. What a brilliant answer! I was blown away. It was great.
Once we were done going over our list of awesome things we went some vocabulary related to the stories from our last session. We talked about the concepts of mortality vs. immortality. This was some pretty heavy conceptual material but I found ways to make it relatable and easily understood for Jason. I was very happy to notice that Jason retained a firm grasp of the concepts. I then asked him to recount as much of the story from last week as he could. Again, Jason clearly expressed the narrative frame for the Labors. I only had to prompt him sporadically. Then, just as we had last week, Jason read each of the remaining stories of the Labors out loud. Along the way he would stop and ask me about specific vocabulary and we would go over them until I felt like he had a good understanding of the word. We also looked up images of the creatures in the stories so that he could have a visual guide and context for what he was reading. As I mentioned before, Jason really responds to this material. He couldn't wait to get to the next Labor after he had finished the previous one. When he was finished reading the last of the Labors I asked him to give me a brief summary of the story of Hercules. He did so very effectively, and immediately afterwards asked me if I had another story for him. Fortunately his sister came at that moment to inform us that time was up. I told Jason I would come up with another story for us to read next week, and I can't wait to find out what it will be!