TP #1: Toy Story and Sketches

September 4, 2013

Tonight I tutored P.J. Chang for the first time. He is the 7-year-old son of our dear professor, Ms. Kim. When I arrived at their home, P.J. was playing with blocks. His mother told me we could use his room to tutor, but P.J. lingered in the living room. I asked him, “Could you show me your room? I don’t know how to get there!” Pointing did not suffice—this tutor had to be led there personally.

P.J., like many kids, was shy and monosyllabic at first. When I asked him certain things (“What was that character’s name?”), he would mumble, “I don’t know….” We started by reading the Toy Story tome that his mother thoughtfully left for us. He chose Toy Story 3, and we began. He wanted to switch off pages, and I agreed. The language was advanced! I explained “huddling” and “devastated,” words he pronounced perfectly if hesitantly but I could tell held no meaning for him. We took frequent breaks in reading to talk about the expressions in the illustrations or about his own toys. About three pages in, P.J. warmed up. “Do you have a toy box?” I asked him.

“Yeah! I have a box,” he pointed. “But I keep most of my toys in there,” pointing to the closet.

“Oh, in your closet?”

“Yeah. And I have money, in there,” pointing to his little toy bank. After I expressed appropriate admiration, he continued talking to me about the rooms in his house and what happens when a guest visits (“I have to keep my room clean and put my toys away.”). I let him ramble a while, enjoying this floodgate of speech. As Ms. Kim told me, he speaks well. Once he’s animated, his speech flows very fluently. He has no accent, though he is hesitant at times. It’s clear that his weakness is not in speech but in vocabulary.

When we returned to the story, I tried to emphasize reading with anticipation and tone. “If there’s a period, I try to ‘land’ my sentence and make it go down at the end. But if it’s a question, I try to ask you like this?” I’m not sure if I was making sense. I did notice him pausing more in between sentences (perhaps just figuring out the next word of the next sentence at times) and praised his pauses.

After 45 minutes of reading, we moved on to the vocabulary list Ms. Kim had sent me. There were 7 words, including crumbs, brought, block, spread, and imitation. I used the handy whiteboard to write the first word, crumbs, and draw a cookie. “What happens when you hold a cookie, P.J.?”

“At Publix, they give you a cookie! It could have sprinkles, or chocolate….”

“And what happens when you hold it? What could fall off and be in your hand?”

“Well, if it’s a sprinkle cookie, a sprinkle.” I acknowledged the logic in that.

“Oh! Crumbs! Crumbs could fall off!” Once P.J. gets on a roll, he goes for it. We determined that crackers can also make crumbs, as well as cereal and bread. He ventured lollipops, but I really don’t know what to call those shards of hard candy when you bite one. It didn’t make its way into the example sentences I wrote under the cookie.

For brought, he knew you could bring a game or a folder. When we came to spread, he confidently used the available markers to gather them in a bunch on the chair and then spread them over its surface. We imitated ducks (and drew some on the board) as well as dogs, cats, and hens. “When people do that,” he told me while putting his hands into his armpits and cocking out his elbows to flap them, “it doesn't

look like a hen.”

“That’s because you’re not a hen, right? It’s an imitation of a hen!”

Block was perhaps our greatest triumph. P.J. told me, “I have tons of blocks!” after I drew one on the board, and I copied that sentence down. Then I held the marker in front of me. “Reach for the marker!” When he tentatively did, I gently knocked his hand away. “I blocked you reaching for the marker!” We repeated.

“Oh! Is it block when you do this?” he asked and lifted a forearm in front of his face to shield it from a ‘chop.’ From there, he was unstoppable. We talked about soccer, and he drew the goal on the board with a goalie blocking it.

“I like this,” he confided.

“Oh, the acting it out? Yeah, me too!”

“No, this,” he said, pointing to the board. I’m glad! I’m glad he opened up to me and seemed so comfortable following my drift. I hope he remembers his vocabulary for class!