August 2010 Tutor Group Notes - Focus: Basic Literacy

Based on the needs of the group, discussion this month was directed toward Basic Literacy. Though we sometimes have a planned topic, if tutors who attend prefer to discuss different subject matter, we adjust to the needs of the group. This is a fluid, flexible meeting.

Language Experience Approach
This is a great ice breaker for a new student, or a nice confidence booster for experienced students.

• Have the student tell you about something that happened that week, or a favorite subject/hobby/TV show...etc
• Write down word for word what he/she says
• Read it back to the student
• Have the student read the story
• Pick out the challenging words - either write them on little pieces of paper or index cards, or make a copy of the story and cut up the words
• Review the words out of context - individually
• Have the student read the story again

In "Tutor - A Collaborative Approach to Literacy Instruction" you can read about this in more detail on pages 48 - 53.

Learning New Words
Prepare in advance by choosing a piece of literature and writing the challenging words on a separate piece of paper, grouped into methods you can teach them with (as listed below). You can review the 'challenging' words together using the techniques below, and later have the student read the paragraph(s) that contain the words.

Reading the piece AFTER you have gone over the individual words will help reinforce what they have learned, and give them a little more confidence, since they will have experienced these words in advance.

• Sight words are words that people simply 'recognize'
• Context clues are ways to help a student figure out what a word is based on the other words in the sentence
• Phonics is the relationship between how letters sound combined with each other
• Word patterns can be used to see relationships between groups of letters and finding that they are common in many words (rhyming words, for example)
• Breaking words out into syllables is a practice to help recognize patterns and prounounce words

In "Tutor - A Collaborative Approach to Literacy Instruction" you can read about all of these techniques in more detail on pages 53 - 75.

Writing - Very Basic - Capitalization
If you have a very basic student, you may wish to work on the use of capital letters. Some great examples of how to practice are

• Have your student write a list of names using the correct capitalization- one for every letter of the alphabet. (ex. Amy, Brad, Cliff, etc.)
• Have your student write a list of states and cities using the correct capitalization. See if you can follow the same format (one for every letter of the alphabet.)
• Provide a written paragraph, or write one with your student where he/she will circle the first letter of every sentence to enforce the idea of capitalization at the start of a sentence.

May Tutor Group Meeting Notes

Cathy Varney's book "Outside the Text Book" has been a hit after extremely positive reviews on some very high profile literacy sites!

Check out the sites, reviews, and her blog with the book description (top right corner).

Purchase your very own copy at ReadWest today or order here:
http://outsidethetextbook.blogspot.com/

Other reference materials we reviewed and recommend:

Oxford Picture Dictionary (Jayme Adelson-Goldstein, Norma Shapiro)
This is a great ESL resource and comes in various languages. We reviewed the English/Spanish version, which showed fantastic pictures with their English and Spanish words below them.

Picture Stories (also 'More Picture Stories') (Fred Lignon)
Each chapter provides a series of lessons based on the same subject, complete with pictures, worksheets for students, answers for the tutor. The lessons provided can apply to all ESL students, from beginners to advanced, as they progress toward the student writing their very own essay based on the study topic. Fun, real life subjects will come alive for you and your student as you enjoy the variety this book has to offer!

I Speak English (Ruth Colvin)
Highly recommended by our resident tutor/tutor trainer Cathy Varney, this book offers fabulous lessons you can use with your individual student or a group.

April Tutor Group Meeting Notes

ESL Students

Students dependant on a dictionary or electronic dictionary - how to encourage them to learn using context

1. When going through study materials, list the words he/she has difficulties with
2. Use these words in different sentences, on flash cards, have your student create sentences with them
3. Assign homework: write different sentences using these words
4. Have the student look up "context" in their dictionary - discuss the meaning of this word to help you both understand your objectives.

Lessons using "Why / How / Where / Who / When / What Questions

Resources for lessons:

• "English No Problem" book and workbook
• "WH" questions - good web link http://a4esl.org/q/h/9704/dg-wh.html
• Another web resource - http://www.usingenglish.com/
• A great search engine - http://www.bing.com/
• 
  
  Dice Game (click "Games" under "Search Post Subjects" for details - incorporate these words on dice, combine it with picture cards. Take turns rolling the dice and choosing a card. If your dice shows "What" and your card is a picture of a book, an example of a sentence would be "What is the name of this book?"

Picture of various die you can create - find supplies at Hobby Lobby for solid dice, check with Cathy or Lisa at ReadWest for paper dice - you would tape colored paper with your written words where the holes are in the dice.

Assigning Homework

• 
  
  Ask your student if they have time to do homework, or would like to do homework. Some students may be extremely busy and not have the time.
• 
  
  If your student has no time for homework, think of ways they could practice their words or phrases in their every day life. For example, ask them to identify things at work or with their families that they can use as practice.
• 
  
  If your student uses email, you could establish a weekly 'email' dialog. It could be brief (one or two sentences from you, including a question) where they need to respond. Print the conversation and go over it in your session. Be sure to discuss your plans for review with your student, as you should approach the converstation from a positive perspective so they do not become sensitive about responding.
• 
  
  If your student does not have email, write them a note that they can take home with them, and ask them to bring their written response in so you could review it together.

March Tutor Group Meeting Notes

Finding math lessons and practice worksheets for GED preparation was the topic this month.

Some of the best places to search from:
http://www.myaol.com/
http://www.about.com/

Some of the best search words to use

• free
• worksheets
• practice
• printable
• free math homework help

Some of the best sites for lessons and practice worksheets you could print:
http://www.themathleague.com/
http://www.math.com/
http://www.visualfractions.com/
http://www.freemathhelp.com/
http://math.about.com/
http://www.helpingwithmath.com/

A fun site with interesting reading material for practicing with your students - the site is about a book but all of the awesome passages are there on the site. You can comment and participate in the blog discussions. With such a wide variety of positive passages, you are sure to find material to use for your ESL or BL students!

http://1000awesomethings.com/

February Tutor Group Meeting Notes

Discussion this month centered around the format of our student meetings.. how often we meet, how much time we spend on the tutoring work. We also discussed where to find practice math for the GED.

January 2010 Tutor Group Sharing Meeting

Discussions during this month's meeting:

Where do we drawn the line.. how do we remain personable yet professional as tutors?
ReadWest has some very specific guidelines as our foundation. We do become close to our students as we get to know each other, but we need to be careful if our tutoring is expanding into more personal arenas that are uncomfortable. Some guidelines include but are not limited to:

• Always meet in a public place, never your home or your student's home
• When you meet, meet the student at your destination, don't give them a ride
• Personal errands are not what we signed up to do, we signed up to tutor

If you feel that your student is expecting more than tutoring, please talk to Muncie for guidance.

BL and ESL Students are very crafty - they have used many tricks to get by.
They have used word recognition by sight, ways to avoid reading, and much more. Learn more about how YOUR student has managed to get by with their limited communication skills. Work to apply those 'tricks' that they are already familiar with during your lessons, but with a twist to help them reach their goals.

How to 'correct' a student in a positive way
Gold stars, encouragement, focus on what was right. Lengthy discussion ensued as to how to provide positive reinforcement and avoid negative methods of correction.

Using the sense of touch during lessons
Tactile learning seems to be key for many students. Using objects the student can pick up, move around, feel, and touching the materials in general is an effective method.

Homework
Many students would like to do homework but have very busy lives. We discussed ways to incorporate some homework.. email, journal writing, small mini goals along the way may work for some students and not others.

Record Keeping - Monitoring Progress

• The Spiral Notebook - instead of writing on the whiteboard (words/sentences with corrections) or a computer, do the work with your student in a spiral notebook. Keep the notebook to use every week. It's a fabulous record you can review later on to show them all the progress they have made.
• Send your student home with a perfect copy - After all corrections are made, have the student write the final copy of their corrected work on paper they can take home. This is what they can review, and share proudly with their family.

A good book to help set goals with your student, and for an abundance of regular "achievements"
The Spark: The 28 Day Breakthrough Plan for Losing Weight, Getting Fit, and Transforming Your Life
By Chris Downie

Don't let the title fool you. While weight loss and fitness are a selling point to this plan, the author talks in depth about goal setting. He discusses how to set long term goals, but additionally 3 phases of shorter term goals that are achievable and realistic steps along the way to reaching your major long term goal. With this method, he explains, you can achieve any goal you set in your life.

I am currently starting to apply this with my students. We will set their goals together. Using this method, for example, a student with a goal to pass the GED will have many opportunities for 'smaller victories' along the way. I encourage you to check it out.

You can also read more at www.sparkpeople.com

Thank you to everyone who was able to attend, it was an awesome sharing experience. If you were unable to attend, we hope to see you in February!

Pronounciation Workshop with Cathy Varney

Tonight Cathy conducted an awesome Pronounciation Workshop with incredible creative ideas to help your ESL student with pronounciation. While I cannot possibly reproduce the class here, I could provide a bit of a recap.

• For those who attended, this is a good outline.
• For those who have not attended, this should give you an idea of what you could get from such a workshop, as perhaps you would wish to attend the next time Cathy presents this class - which I highly recommend for all ESL Tutors.

Techniques Discussed / Demomstrated
What is Prosody?  - rhythm of our speech - look this up using "Bing" and you will find dozens of ideas

How do we teach students to stress or emphasize the appropriate syllables and words in a sentence? Some techniques discussed and demonstrated were

• Counting the syllables in a word/sentence, tapping them out on a table
• Writing the word various ways using large and small letters, slashes to separate syllables
• Rubber Band technique - ex: stretch the rubber band for longer syllables
• "Orchestra Leader" - ex: using your hand movements to indicate the rise at the end of a sentence
• March around the room in tempo with the sentence
• Jazz Chants with clapping

Types of stress discussed:

• Tonic Stress - normal intonation of our speech
• Emphatic Stress - word(s) you want to emphasize
• Contrastive Stress - ex: Would you like Pepsi or Coke? .. or providing new information "I lost my red hat"

Elision - letters that blend to the next word
Example: "That is news to me" we would actually say "Thatis newstome" where letters like "m", "n", "t" at the end of a word are often spoken in a blended way with the next word in the sentence.

Pronouncing using a single basic sound for each vowel
Example: "a" would sound like "ah", "e" would sound like "eh", "i" would sound like "ee", etc
This was a thorough interesting topic that is most effective in the classroom. Basically you could use pairs of vowels to phonetically spell out pronounciation of words to give the student a good pronounciation foundation.

Pronouncing the Alphabet
When drawn on the board, listing the letters in colums, this provides a simple picture of how to pronounce them. If you haven't seen this, it's very amazing.

Recommended Books

• "Pronounciation Pairs"
• "Clear Speech" - this book has several levels

This inservice was presented by the New Mexico Coalition. Cathy Varney is certified trainer for the Coalition and Proliteracy.