Student Tutored: Cassie N., grade 8., attends Fairfield Middle School, sessions done at her house.
• (2/5/12) 6:00-8:00 pm
Today Cassie and I worked on her outline and rough draft of her persuasive essay on banning smoking in public places. I showed her an economic form of an outline and prompted her to clarify her thesis statement. I used phrases such as: “What does this mean?”, “Now what?” , “Explain it to me.”, and “Let’s unpack this.”. She got the hang of it and started to say them when I asked her if she knew what I was going to ask her next. She is nervous about speaking in front of her English class, and wants to practice later in the week. I recommended that she create note cards and practice saying her main pathos and logos in the shower and in the mirror before bed, in order to really know her argument enough to sound convincing.
• (2/8/12) 6:00-8:00 pm
Today Cassie and I worked edited her final draft of her persuasive essay on banning smoking in public places, and I helped her with her twelve citations in MLA format. We spent the last hour with her giving me her speech and I giving her feedback. We worked on voice projection, eye contact, and avoiding rushing through her lines (especially during her conclusion). She told me she was particularly nervous about forgetting her lines, so we worked on dramatic pauses so a gap in her flow would seem natural. She is very petite and below five foot, so I suggested she use a podium that has a foot stool to help with her bodily presence (which she thought was hilarious, until I had her go through her speech while standing on a chair for practice).
• (2/12/12) 6:00-8:00
Cassie successfully achieved a 98% on her written and oral persuasive presentation. Today I helped her with a science project in which she needed to construct an ecosystem within an ecosystem that included 2 symbiotic relationships. We spent about 90 minutes doing research online. She wanted to do 1 plant and animal relationship, and a host and parasite relationship. She decided upon honey bees and an apple tree, and a parasitic mite that lives in the intestines of honey bees. We then spent 30 min. watching the Animal Planet show about parasites Monsters Inside Me, compiling a list of materials she’ll need for her diorama.
• (2/14/12) 6:00-8:00
Today we baked chocolate chip cookies we dyed pink for Valentine’s Day, and then she started constructing her diorama while I gave what advice I could. Cassie had gone through her printed sources and highlighted main points for her to remember. I had stopped by the Public Library and picked up a season of Monsters Inside Me that included the parasite she was putting in her bee. Apparently sometimes it finds its way into honey and can make people really sick, especially young children, if it isn’t pasteurized. Materials she used were a cardboard box, constructions paper, mat board, hot glue, pipe cleaners, colored tissue paper, chocolate chips, paint, fishing line, paperclips, real tree bark, and real dried grass.
• (2/18/12) 6:00-8:00
Today Cassie and I worked on diagraming sentences. She had some difficulties defining a preposition and predicate, so we spent roughly an hour coming up with silly sentences to diagram. She would write and diagram them, and I would check her work. I gave her feedback by asking her questions about her work, so I wouldn’t just be telling her. We spent the last hour on her Spanish flashcards for her upcoming test.
• (3/4/12) 6:00-8:00
Today Cassie and I worked on poetry. I used some exercises I had enjoyed using in my classes with her, and she seemed to have fun with them too. One of the exercises was to have us both write down things like: favorite place, favorite 3 word line, what your mom smells like, draw a picture of your first pet, etc.; we them switched papers and wrote a poem containing all of the items on the paper ( we did about four of these kind of exercises).
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