Literacy Tutoring 6

It is hard to believe that I have just completed my final literacy tutoring with L!  The time has gone by really fast, and I am happy with some of the progress that has been made.  I am proud of L for all of the work that he did and for constantly showing up and trying.  During our last tutoring session, we stuck with the same format: survey assessment, reading/mini-lesson, and ABC thematic unit.  

The survey assessment this week was writing vocabulary in order to see how L writes words.  I followed the survey assessment protocol, and I started by telling L I would like to see how many words he could write.  L started by writing his name and then I asked him to write some words.  At first, I gave him the chance to write whatever words he knew, but that was too broad of an option and he didn’t seem to know what to do.  So I decided to narrow it down and ask him to write specific words.  There were a few times where L would say “I can’t” or “I don’t know,” but overall I think that he did a great job trying.  Looking at the words he knew how to spell, he could spell some two letter words pretty well.  The longer the words, though, I noticed that L had trouble writing them.  It was interesting, however, when I asked him to write “look.”  He spelled it as “lyc,” but he went through the letters and told me how he sounded them out.  Even though it was not the correct spelling, I thought it was interesting that he was thinking deeply about how he could attempt to spell it.  Overall, L wrote 7 words correctly.  Although he is still learning about spelling, I was proud of his effort.

L's list of words

After the survey assessment, we read a book. The book we read together was Bee and Me by Alison Jay.  This book is a wordless picture book.  I had never actually read a wordless picture book with a child before, but I have found this to be such a fun and fulfilling experience!  It was so great to have L help me decide what the book was about and where the story was going.  This was also a really, really great opportunity to get L to practice his conversing skills.  He did a great job!  He was very creative.  L even incorporated presidents into the story-he was making this book cross curriculum without even knowing it!  The mini lesson was for L to work on writing, so we worked with the book to create a story.  When we first started the book and I asked L to help me “write” the story by reading it, L told me that he didn’t know enough words to do that.  However, as soon as we started, I encouraged L to tell me what he thought was happening on the first page.  He seemed to feel pretty confident after that and was excited to tell the rest of the story.  I hadn’t seen L quite that excited about a book before, so this was really fun to see. 

Bee and Me by Alison Jay.  Such a fun read!

The biggest way I have been differentiating during the past 6 weeks has been with the books I have chosen.  This week was similar, but I didn’t quite realize how helpful a wordless picture book would be with an English Language Learner.  This was a way for L to tell me a story and get a chance for him to converse and use English.  It also is nice to not be overwhelmed by so many words, which I bet can get quite frustrating.  I will definitely be keeping some wordless picture books in my future classroom one day!

Even thought it was my last session with L, I encouraged him to continue practicing with sounds and combining letters.  I also wished him a great rest of the school year and summer and challenged him to keep on reading.