Slow down, I am too tired to learn your way

 Yesterday, I worked with an 8 year old and was excited because I knew what I wanted to do.  Enter the 8 year old. This child was tired and needed permission to regroup.  He came in and asked to play a game. He chose Rummy-O. This teaches the same thing my set- making game does.  It also takes longer.  Instead of drawing one tile each play we drew two each time. Children like to draw tiles.  The object is supposed to be to Win by getting rid of all your tiles first. The child needed to learn how to play and learn grouping of numbers.  You are also not supposed to let the other player see what tiles you have.  We set the tiles up and then helped each other.  Before the game was over he was showing me what I had to play a couple of times.  What a confidence builder for him to find my move before I did.
Then we worked on the balance board and he did well.  I began tutoring by reading every other sentence while the student reads the opposite ones.  This prevents the negative, "You forgot to stop for the period."
It also helps understanding by stopping at each complete thought. I am working for this child to read every other paragraph. He likes the every other sentence better. The reading selections are also longer. He is resisting the longer as it looks harder so we stopped in the middle of the selection.
I hope today goes as well.

group tutoring

Today I worked with a group of three sisters again. I began by teaching them about sudoku.  I used 4 squares to begin.  When I tried 6 squares, it was too confusing. We will work on this again next week.
I have some stamps that will make this more hands on for the girls.
It is so exciting to see how much the rocket phonics work.  I tried letting the girls play concentration
by themselves and the older two do fine. I will need to work with the youngest one (2nd grade) more
one on one.  The older girl is doing well with understanding the stories in rocket phonics.  We began
working on Math U See today.  We began by letting the girls play with the hands on blocks.  I wanted  to
see how much they understood the base 10 concept.The oldest girl understood the 10 blue strips of ten
to make the red 100 block.  She also did well with finding which ones add up to 10.  I am not sure why
she is struggling with math.  The younger girls will need more help. Working with three at a time is more exhausting for me but seems to be easier for them.

tutoring a new student, finger drills, rocket phonics

It is so exciting to have a new student.  When I get a new student, it has never been someone that is doing well in school.  It is never a parent or friend that comes and says, " I want you to try to tutor my child or friend because they are doing so well in school.  It is this individual, adult or child, is struggling and maybe you have an idea that might help the individual be a success.  Often this person is a wonderful someone who is judged a failure because he or she does not learn at the rate or way the world thinks he or she should. I hope to post the things I have learned and that I use to help this new student.  Not because I know so much but in hopes of helping someone else, help another student.
One of the things I have learned to do is finger drills.  Touch each finger with the thumb beginning with the pointer finger down to the small finger.  Have the student do each hand individually and then do them together. Have them do the finger drills back and forth on the hands. Then have them do the finger drills as you or the student sings.  Then talk as the student does the drill until they can do them without thinking about what they are doing.  Encourage them to do them at home. This may take weeks and you will do other things as they learn this.
The next think I am going to do is rocket phonics.  I will teach with the matching cards first.  This student is young, (6 or7) so I will make sure she can say the sounds and match the cards first.  {Years ago a young man age 9 got into trouble with his teacher, (she was excellent) because he refused to identify a bird nest as starting with a n for nest.  He had never seen a bird nest in a tree and did not recognize the picture as a bird nest. How was she to know he had never seen a bird nest?  How was he to tell her he had not seen a bird nest? Yet he was in trouble for not cooperating.}  We will begin with the vowels a,e,i,o,and u.  I will add m, s and t to round out the numbers to play with.  We will match with them up first and then turn them over to play.  As an adult, I should be able to win a concentration game.  Therefore, I will even the odds by allowing her to turn over three cards on her turn while I turn over two for my turn. Before you decide this is not fair, please tell me what is fair about an adult winning a game against a 7 year old.  A child who has struggled in school already knows how to fail.  As the child gets better or if I am working with a child who is good at this I may let myself  turn over 3 cards to even the odds. I also like to put the cards in a match stack all together to promote the idea that we won by playing and learning instead of someone has to lose so someone else can win. As we turn over each card the sound is said aloud.
I will let you know how well this goes and how much fun we had, hopefully, Monday evening.  Please try this with a child you see struggling to learn.