Lauren TP#9

Today Maria (the middle school student from the Ukraine) and I met up again at the library. Before meeting up with her I had printed out a few things about her summer reading. I printed out a vocabulary list and some critical thinking questions for each chapter.

First off, I read a chapter from Stargirl aloud. The book is about an unpopular girl in high school and how she tries to become popular. After finishing up that chapter I asked her a few critical thinking questions. At this point she was about 70% right in her answers and seemed to have difficulty finding her words.

After a few questions I asked her to read the first half of the next chapter aloud. Her reading was not very accurate and the book seemed to advanced for her. Because of the fact that this was on her summer reading list we were going to have to make it work. I had to help her pronounce many of the words and at times I could tell that she was nervous and just wanted to get through the chapter. I don't think she understood more than half of what she was reading. Half way through this chapter we stopped to work on some vocabulary words.

I got this list of vocabulary words from the Scholastic website. Most of the words were so advanced that I had never even heard of them. I felt bad because we had to look up every word and they were difficult for both of us to understand. After this I asked a few questions about the chapter that she had just read aloud to me. It became pretty clear that she was unsure of what had gone on. She seems to absorb more when I read to her and she follows along. Whenever Maria reads out loud she gets nervous and caught up sounding out the words.

I could also tell that the vocabulary was miserable for her. I felt like the bad guy making her look up so many words in a dictionary. She had never used one before so I taught her how to look up words. Maria's writing is much better than her conversation and reading comprehension skills. Next time I'd like to read aloud to her and talk about the book more and work on critical thinking. In order to be prepared for the 6th grade it is imperative that Maria fully understood the summer reading.