Katelyn_TP_#8

On February 4th, I met Hamed and Zhongu at the Grandmarc apartments. I was having trouble getting everyone together at the same place and time, but Mohammed had told me in advance that he couldn't come that day, so it wasn't an issue. I had found an article on Heads Up English (http://www.headsupenglish.com/) about cell phones and how they affect memory--I thought it would be a great reading exercise, and it had some good questions included. We talked about memory and phones before I showed them the article in order to build their schema. Interestingly, they thought that older people would do worse on memory tests; the article later showed this was not true in the case of remembering phone numbers and birthdays. Following the techniques I observed in Josh's reading classes, I slowly read the article along with them, and had them stop me any time they did not understand a word. We paused only twice: bracket (which I explained by drawing on the board) and myriad (I explained this is an academic word--you wouldn't say to a friend "hey, let's get a myriad of pizza"). Afterwards, we answered the questions together. When we finished the questions, I asked if they could remember their best friend's birthdays, their home phone numbers, or the birthdays of their extended family. When I asked Hamed if he could tell me his cousin's birthday, he asked me what the word "cousin" meant--I immediately thought to make our next lesson about family members, which is exactly what we did.