Meagan TP#7

The last two weeks I have been in NY and NYC. I have been tutoring a new tutee from China, as well! Her name is Zhang Li and she is only nine years old.  We meet every morning at the library to go over grammar and spelling (her biggest areas of trouble).  Our first session consisted of getting to know each other and finding the best methods of approaching English grammar that Zhang could understand and enjoy learning.  With spelling, we decided to take time before the end of each session to cover ten words of her choice that she was struggling with.

So, for that day, Wednesday Aug.14, we played two grammar games on an interactive English site called, http://www.funenglishgames.com/games.html.  The site has a nice selection of games you can play that cover most of the basic grammar rules children learn (prefix/suffix, verbs/nouns, punctuation).  We played a punctuation game that required the player to point and shoot a laser at a chalkboard in order to give the sentence on the board the proper punctuation (kind of like a scholastic first-person shooter game, but with a laser gun).  Zhang was able to get six out of the ten sentences correct and I gave her an explanation on sentences she had trouble with.  For example, using commas in a sentence was confusing to her, so we practiced some extra sentences to show the correct use of commas in each situation: listing or separating elements in a series, commas plus a conjunction, and using an introductory element (i.e. "Running across the street to catch the bus,").  The second game we played was one that practiced prefixes and suffixes.  The object was to select the correct prefix/suffix for a word next to it and click to see if the word was correct for the points. This was Zhang's favorite game as she could take her time and allow herself to think of the correct suffix/prefix to employ. Every now and then I helped her with subtle hints or a quick explanation to help her move on to the next word.

For our wrap-up, I asked Zhang to pick any book from a library to read and pick any vocabulary from the book to spell. For our next session the following day, we would review at least ten words she had trouble spelling and practice them until she felt comfortable to pick ten more.