FSU-CIES TEFL Fall I, 2017

Date / Time :    12:00pm 10/20/17 Location : CIES Centre Conference Room Topic / Skill : Writing / Pronouns / -ing Feedback given to the tutee : For the first part of the session, I met with Hassan (?) and we discussed his homework. He was confused between "his" and "he is". I told Hassan that these terms dealt with either possession (his) or simply adding details (he is __. ). I gave Hassan several practice problems on whiteboards in order to help him understand it more.  Hassan then had a question of the function of "-ing". I told Hassan that "-ing" dealt with verbs that are occurring at a specific point in time. Hassan was in group 1 for reading so I did not elaborate on all the types of time in which they are used (past or future). I asked Hassan to think of "-ing" as a verb in the present. I wrote out several words on the whiteboard and asked him to pick out the ones that can be used for "-ing". He was successfully abl...

<TS Blogs>  Date/Time: October 25th, 1:00 PM Location: Facetime Topic/Skill: Speaking Feedback provided to tutee: Amazing job! She was able to  recognize  mistakes and correct  them  on her own. Like I have mentioned in  previous  tutoring sessions, practicing  speaking   English out loud  and  keeping a running  vocabulary  list is key.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: I learned that patiences and consistency is important. If she did not practice everyday she would have not seen improvements and eventually would have given up. Which is a very negative cycle. P racticing  and staying consist is super important. Improvements will be made and the student's confidences will increase. 

Date/Time: October 27th, 5pm Location: International Coffee Hour Topic discussed: Colleges in America and Jamaica Cultural and/or linguistic topics you and your partner learned: I was really impressed because I went to the International Coffee Hour hoping to start a conversation with someone, but Jordan actually just walked up and started talking to me. I hope I can start conversations so easily with people when I live in another country.

Date /Time :   10/27/17    10:00am Location : Riley Elementary School Topics/Skills : Letter Recognition Feedback Provided : I met again with Chrispe today and Mrs. Frost wanted him to work on letter recognition. Last time we were working on the letters of s,a,m, and p. Today's letters were e, c, j,  and u. Again, I devised a game in order to help facilitate language learning and I made it in a communicative approach for Chrispe. The game was similar to the game on Wednesday and I made it into a guessing game by which Chrispe would try to pick out the letters when they are faced down and then pronounce them. His letter recognition still needs work and it is a very slow process for him. I tried testing him on the past letters (s/a/m/p) and it went ok. He recognized a few of the letters (notably p and a). Lessons learned : I learned how weird that the public school systems can be here in Tallahassee. Teachers were very stern to the kids and I felt pretty bad for t...

Date/Time: October 27th. 10:40 am Location: Sabal Palm Elementary Topic/Skill: Time Feedback provided to tutee: We worked together learning how to tell time in English. This involved some new information for her, so I provided lots of positive reinforcement. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Having something physical can make any lesson more interesting. At first we were working from a workbook with pictures of clocks, and I would just ask her what time it was. She knew most of them, but was having trouble with telling the hour when it was ten or fewer minutes before the hours (She would say 4:55 when it was 3:55). The woman who runs the ESL study room brought us some toy clocks to play with, and my student was immediately reinvigorated despite feeling defeated a moment before. Also, even though she knows how to tell time (including when it's right before the hour now), if she doesn't take her time with it, she messes up which hand is minutes and wh...

Date/Time: October 27th,  9:40 am Location: Sabal Palm Elementary School Topic/Skill: Reading Feedback provided to tutee: Help with reading when he repeatedly made the same mistakes. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: The student I normally work with was not here today, so I was working with his brother. It's interesting, because they can both read at a reasonable speed, but don't have very good comprehension. While the student I normally help can read a bit faster and has good word recognition for words he knows, the student I helped today was making a few grammar mistakes. He kept switching past participles to infinitives or the other way around. This is interesting, because I think it shows he was able to think about the words more, and was making guesses at what the next word would be, rather than just reading word for word. However, he was still getting the words wrong. I think his comprehension was actually a little better, but I tried to get him ...

Date: Oct. 25 Location: Sabal Palm Elementary Topic/Skill: Reading Student: Jaques Kilozo Pulled Jaques aside and took him to the school's library/media center to do a repetition exercise. I had him select a book of an appropriate level, and then read it to him, and had him repeat after me. Jaques was especially talkative during this exercise, which was wonderful, and I was able to get him conversing with me about things in the book (in this case, trains), as well as having him tell me a little bit about himself. This was a great chance to work on Jaques speaking skills and pronunciation, and was the most rewarding tutoring session I've had at Sabal Palm yet.

Date: Oct. 25 Location: Sabal Palm Elementary Topic/Skill: Reading Student: Daniel Kilozo As with the last few weeks with Daniel, I was sitting down with him and reading a test to him. As usual, took the opportunity to turn this into a reading and speaking exercise. Reading a test provides easy comprehension checks throughout, as it requires to student to directly answer a question, and I provide further comprehension checks. I also use the opportunity to encourage him to speak, having Daniel say the answer to each question out loud before bubbling it in.  Also spent a little time simply chatting with Daniel, asking him how he is and how he's feeling, and coaxing answers out of him. Daniel is still very shy about speaking but he's starting to warm up to me and get a smidge more talkative.

Date/ Time : 10/25/17   10:00am Location : Riley Elementary School Topic/Skill : Letter recognition Feedback given to the Tutee : I met with Chrispe today in the media center. I was with Chrispe last Wednesday and we were tasked to help him remember the letters of s,a,m, and p. I met with his teacher today and Mrs. Frost only said he recognised one letter. So to help Chrispe understand the letters more and try to help with the process of remembering, I devised a game. I used letter flashcards and put them in a random order. I would then instruct Chrispe to close his eyes and pick a letter. Chrispe would then put his hand on a letter. He would try to figure out what letter it was and how to say it. This game was very amusing for Chrispe and I would like to think he learn a lot from it. Lessons about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned : I learned that by devising a little game, it can go a long way. Last time I met with Chrispe, it was very hard to get his attention and to mak...

Date / Time :     10/24/17      4:15pm Location : Dunkin' Donuts Topic Discussed : Jobs, School, Bribery/Crime, Movies Cultural and linguistic things that were learned : I was intrigued by what job that Abdulaziz had and how exactly he got to America. His backstory included finishing college then going from a period of no job and then to his current job (computer programmer) that let him learn English in America. I was amazed to find this out. We started to go over cultural misinterpretations. Some subtitles in that Abdulaziz was watching were incorrectly translated in a movie. I was actually impressed because he noticed this and what words he heard differed from the translation. In the movie, the character said the word "hurt" and the Arabian translation was for the word "harm". I had to explain to Abdulaziz that these words depended on context. I was still very impressed nonetheless. Abdulaziz started to ask me cultural questions that pertained to rumours ...

Date/Time :   10/23/17    1:40pm Location : John G. Riley Elementary School  Topic Skill : Basic Math/arithmetic and counting  Feedback given to the tutee : I met with Cruz when I was volunteering for the TRO yesterday. He was  my friend's tutoring partner and my friend was feeling ill so I decided to cover for him.  Cruz and I were working on his homework and figuring out simple word problems. Simple word problems were broken down with the help of little cubes to help add. His addition skills were very limited but this is due to his age and grade (3rd Grade). Cruz spoke relatively good English and was able to somewhat communicate well enough to ask questions or express confusion.  Lessons learned from tutoring : I learned that positive reinforcement can go a long way. He needed positive reinforcement in order to maintain his confidence and his focus on the assignment. I think possibly bringing candy in as a reward may yield even more po...

Date / Time : 10/23/17  12:15pm Location : CIES Centre Topic / Skill : Writing and preliminary issues to writing Feedback provided to the Tutee : I met Hani while I was eating lunch yesterday at the CIES centre. We struck up a conversation on Tallahassee and then asked if I could possibly answer some questions on writing. He asked what are the best ways to improve his writing and I replied it depended on what specifically he would like to improve. His biggest issues that he was struggling with was the speed of writing and spelling errors. I suggested taking timed writing exercises by which he could practice spelling and writing as quickly as possible. Lessons learned : I learned that our alphabet is truly not as easy as it looks. I never really thought about how hard our alphabet is to understand and to write. I didn't really think about it as well until he handed his phone to me to put in my contact information. His arabic alphabet keyboard was up and I did not know what any ...

<TS Blogs>  Date/Time: October 21th, 9:00 AM Location: FaceTime Topic/Skill: Speech Feedback provided to tutee: Slow down when speaking. That will help in word selection and pronunciation. Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: We practiced a  debate style speech activity.  Her teacher gave her a list of topics with sides to choose from. The goal was to defend one's side.  For instance, should college be free? Yes or no? I learned to give my students time to prepare for the activity and not to interrupt when they are speaking or stuck. 

<TS Blogs>  Date/Time: October 16-th, 2:00 PM Location: Voice Thread Topic/Skill: Vocabulary,  Plural Feedback provided to tutee:  Vocabulary!  Vocabulary! Create a running list of new vocabulary words and apply them to your speech. As well as, watch shows in English or even listen to English music. Also, be more aware when talking about more than one thing. Make sure to add the "s" at the end of the word to show that it is plural.  Lesson(s) about tutoring and/or the tutee you learned: Teaching virtually was very interesting. It took some time to figure out the program. For instance, I created my thread but did not press "share" so my thread was not visible to my students. I also was not very sure on how much  critiquing Ramin wanted me to practice. This was a new method of teaching so it was awesome to be part of the trial run!