My second tutoring session with Mathew went really well. This time we met at 3:30 so the lesson lasted an hour and a half. However, when we meet again it will only be for an hour because I noticed it was hard for Mathew to concentrate during the full hour and a half. At the start of this lesson I read over Mathew's summary for his reading log. He only made a few minor mistakes and after explaining all of them to him I had him read the completed and corrected version out loud to me. Then I helped him with some of his other homework. He understood the directions without my help and answered most of the questions correctly. Once he was done with all of his homework I had him read a few pages out of the Harry Potter book that he read last week. However, after three pages he got bored so we went downstairs and each picked out a book for him to read. I picked out Captain Underpants for him, while he chose Dinosaurs before Dark. Both of these were chapter books-sometimes Mathew chooses to read below his reading level so I encouraged him to get a chapter book. He decided to read Dinosaurs before Dark. He read eight chapters during the remainder of our tutoring session. During this time I helped him with words that he couldn't pronounce or didn't know and I had him summarize each chapter after he finished reading it. For the most part, he was fairly accurate with his summaries, but a few times I had to ask him questions about what happened during that chapter to make sure that he understood the main idea of what he just read. I think Mathew has very strong reading and comprehension skillz.
For kids who have short attention spans, you want to break your lesson into different sections. Here's an example:
ReplyDelete10 min: Schema building activity
25 min: Reading
25 min: Vocabulary Game