Zeb TP#3

    Wednesday afternoon (the 10^th) I had my second meeting with the Hong twins. Right from the very beginning I sensed that they had come prepared to hate whatever I did. When I greeted them and asked them how they were doing all I got was shrugs and “I-don't-know” sounds. I asked them what they have been doing lately. The same. I continued trying to have some kind of meaningful exchange with them, asking if they have been in school or on vacation. They still wouldn't say anything, and their mother hadn't left yet so she supplied the information that they were on vacation. I asked if they enjoy vacations from school and received about the same amount of information that my previous questions had received.

    I decided to just go ahead and get into the lesson I had planned, hoping that the problem was just some shyness they needed to get over. I asked “do you enjoy stories?” “No”. I then made some comments on some of the wonderful benefits of listening to/reading stories, but they seemed to remain rather unconvinced. The lesson that I had planned was the story starter from my writing lesson, scaling the project back to only require reading the story's beginning (less than 500 words plus two illustrative pictures) and writing several sentences to finish the story. (I had tested the lesson plan on my 8yr old sister, and without any arm twisting, manipulating or sweet talking I had very good results.) I started by giving each boy a copy of the story with the pictures and asked them to read it and circle any words that they didn't understand. David started reading the story and circling the words that he didn't understand, but Matthew was sprawled out on the table and wouldn't read his paper. After David had circled the words that he didn't understand I gave very simple definitions and explanations, and by all indications he had at least a decent grasp of the story. Just to be sure I gave a paraphrased and simplified version of the story, and then asked for several written sentences (based on what the picture showed) to complete the unfinished story. At this point I was pretty much ignoring Matthew since I didn't know what else to do. To my surprise Matthew picked up his pencil and notebook and started writing, while David refused and stated that he is “seriously bored”. I asked David what might be the reasons that he is bored, but he didn't have any explanation. I then encouraged him to go ahead and write some sentences to finish the story, because if he is busy and thinking about the story he won't be bored. Then his story changed; now he is confused and doesn't know what to do. I go over the very simple instructions again, giving clear suggestions and pointing out that the picture shows exactly what happened and he only has to write it in his own words. Still confused. I asked him how it is that his brother didn't read the story himself, yet he understands it enough to write a story ending for it. He didn't know why that might be, so I suggested that his problem is that he wants to be confused. I then started ignoring David and encouraging Matthew by giving him suggestions that he could incorporate into his writing. He ended up with one sentence that clearly expressed what happened and was well written.

    At some point in the middle of all this after it became clear that David and Matthew were not enjoying the lesson I asked what kind of things they like to do, but the only response I got was a shrug of the shoulders and an 'I don't know'. I responded “if you won't tell me what kind of things you like to do then I can't do the kind of things you like to do in our next meeting”.

     By this time we were 25-30 minutes into our session and it was clearly time to do something else. The week before they had said something about Boggle, so I had it along with me. We played several rounds of the game: this time David was writing down the words that he found, but Matthew insisted on pulling pencils out of his bag to represent each word that he found instead of writing them down. The whole point of the game depends on knowing who has found the most words that no one else notices, and if the words aren't written down you can't really tell what is what, so......

    If there was any part of the session in which Matthew and David expressed any level of interest it was the Boggle game, but after about 10 minutes their participation started dropping off. About 40 minutes had gone by since we started our session and I was ready for it to end, so I told them they could go to where their mother was in the library. I followed them there and explained to her the lesson that I had done (tried to do) with them and showed her enough of their work that she saw there were parts that one boy had done and not the other. She seemed somewhat embarrassed and mentioned that when the boys were younger they enjoyed reading, but not now, and when they have to read a book they always choose something that is below their level. She did say that the books they choose are about 'boy things', so I didn't really have any suggestions to offer as it seems they already may choose their own reading material and subject of interest. Mrs. Hong informed me that she had some kind of appointment the following Wednesday and would be unable to bring the boys to the library, so after goodbyes I made my way home.