Thursday, November 20, 2008

So I am a part of the America Reads tutors at our school. Basically I go to an assigned Jersey City school and help tutor kids after school, (after care). I really enjoy the kids there, they are the wildest, but I enjoy them all. What I enjoy most is as soon as I enter the building they start jumping on me saying "yay! now you can help me with my homework." What I normally do is help them with their homework and play games or color with them. But today was my first time helping a child study for a spelling test they have tomorrow. Olivia showed me her practice test, unfortunately she didn't do very well she only had one right out of ten. So I asked Olivia if I could help her study, she said yes. So I decided to write the words on a sheet of paper and then have her write them twice each. Then I gave her a little test, I would say the word out loud then she would write them on paper. When she was finished I checked her work and she got all of them wrong! I was so disappointed, so I told her to write them over, and then I would tell her how to write each word. After that another one of her classmates, Ashley, came over and asked if I would test her too, so I tested both at the same time, saying the words out loud and then they would write the words. I checked the girls work and again Olivia got all of them wrong, and she misspells them the same way. Example: Blue-blow, green-gren, pink-pik, orange-orinj, girl-grul, those were some of the words she misspelled. But Ashley did very well, I told her great job she'll do fine tomorrow. I then told Olivia she needed to study really hard, I asked if she knew how to read the words, she did, but then I asked her to read her other homework and she couldn't. I believe she is in 1st or 2nd grade, I wish I could help her with her reading. She obviously has problems memorizing and reading words. I left her practice tests that she did with me in her folder and wrote a note to her mom " please have Olivia study, she is not doing well." I don't know if I was authorized to do that, but I felt I needed to let her mom know! I hope she does study and does well.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

wow i think there is something else going on with this child, maybe she has some type of learning problem since she cant memorize and keeps making the same mistakes. I dont think this is normal -anyways its nice that you help children afterschool, most of the time the parents and teachers dont have a lot of time to spend with each indivual child.