Yesterday Zeb and I met with the Hong twins; he taught David and I taught Matthew. I was really impressed with how calm and polite Matthew was. Since I didn't know much about what level Matthew was at, I started with a sort of test. I had printed out worksheets on the Simple Past Tense (I had been told he might need help on that) - I would read one of the sentence in the present out loud, and he would write down the past (I had also heard that he might need practice spelling). We played tic tac to on the side - if he got everything right, he would take a turn. However, I didn't want to bore him with this, so we went very quickly through a handful of sentences until I had some idea of what he needs help on (irregular verbs like "cut" and "put" tricked him up).
I had brought a book with me for us to read, but Matthiew had a few with him as well. I asked which he wanted to read, and he said he would read his (it was about Star Wars). He would read two pages out loud, and then I would ask him to write a sentence about it. At first I thought he was bored by this, but his sentences were very good. He would be about to finish a sentence and then decide to add a longer explanation (which would look like a lot of outside information), so he was definitely engaged. His mother had warned that he tended to chose books below his level, and this one might have been a little bit easy, but we did come across few words that he didn't know (for example, "valiant"). It seemed like a decent exercise at the very least for practicing spelling and handwriting.
We had a few minutes left and so I got out some Mad Lib books I'd found. (I thought it could be a good informal test of what grammatical terms he is familiar with.) Apparently Matthiew had never done one before, and he seemed at least a little interested in knowing how it worked (plus I had an Indiana Jones one, and he likes the movie). He seemed to understand all of the parts of speech well, except for adverbs ("I think I forgot what they are...").
At the end of the hour Zeb and I met up with the boys mother for a minute. Although the boys do speak English fairly well as their second language, she is concerned because they are a little bit behind their classmates. From what I've read, though, this is normal; children who grow up speaking more than one language with pick up each language more slowly at first, but catch up in both at a certain point. I told her that Matthiew had all of his papers with him if she wanted to see his work and the corrections I made. We agreed to meet up next week at the same time.
I had brought a book with me for us to read, but Matthiew had a few with him as well. I asked which he wanted to read, and he said he would read his (it was about Star Wars). He would read two pages out loud, and then I would ask him to write a sentence about it. At first I thought he was bored by this, but his sentences were very good. He would be about to finish a sentence and then decide to add a longer explanation (which would look like a lot of outside information), so he was definitely engaged. His mother had warned that he tended to chose books below his level, and this one might have been a little bit easy, but we did come across few words that he didn't know (for example, "valiant"). It seemed like a decent exercise at the very least for practicing spelling and handwriting.
We had a few minutes left and so I got out some Mad Lib books I'd found. (I thought it could be a good informal test of what grammatical terms he is familiar with.) Apparently Matthiew had never done one before, and he seemed at least a little interested in knowing how it worked (plus I had an Indiana Jones one, and he likes the movie). He seemed to understand all of the parts of speech well, except for adverbs ("I think I forgot what they are...").
At the end of the hour Zeb and I met up with the boys mother for a minute. Although the boys do speak English fairly well as their second language, she is concerned because they are a little bit behind their classmates. From what I've read, though, this is normal; children who grow up speaking more than one language with pick up each language more slowly at first, but catch up in both at a certain point. I told her that Matthiew had all of his papers with him if she wanted to see his work and the corrections I made. We agreed to meet up next week at the same time.
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