Celina_TP #2

My second tutoring session was with my new child tutee Yunseo. Because Yunseo is only in kindergarten, I planned some activities and exercises that would match her level of reading and writing. I wanted to make sure she was not bored with the lesson. However, I soon learned that Yunseo is well beyond the level of a normal kindergarten student! She was incredibly smart and was capable of reading chapter books that are written for children older than her. Her mother explained to me that she needed to work on her writing skills.
For our tutoring session I had Yunseo read a few pages from her book, and then we talked about what was happening in the story. Because it was an adventure book, I had her think of an adventure that she would like to go on. Then I asked her to write me a few sentences about her planned adventure. She chose to go on an adventure to "Candyland" and I had her write sentences answering the questions, why do you want to go there?, what will you do there?, how will you get there?, and who will you take with you?. It took her quite a while to write out what she wanted to say. She was very set on writing every word out perfectly and without errors. It took her about ten minutes to write out about three sentences.
After out first writing activity I had her read some more from her book, and then let her draw a little bit just to keep her from getting bored. I decided that we should attempt a speed writing activity to maybe help her get over her time consuming style of writing. So I asked about a vacation adventure that she had already been on, and asked her to write about it. I told her we were going to set the timer for 3 minutes and see how much she could write in that time. She planned and brainstormed about what she was going to say, and decided to write about her vacation to San Francisco. So I set the stopwatch and she started to write about it. She managed to write about a sentence and a half in three minutes, which wasn't too bad, but I think she can definitely do better.
For our next tutoring session I plan to do the speed writing activity again, but maybe this time keep her from getting distracted and bored which is why I think it takes her a bit longer to finish writing. I think I am going to print out some pictures of pets and have her write some stories about adventures the pets might go on. Her mother also showed me a list of vocabulary words Yunseo needed to practice with for her school work. Maybe for our next session I can have Yunseo draw one of the vocab words out of a pile and have her speed write about that word for a set amount of time.