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LLSS 459-002
Garcia
Tutoring Reflection
Over the course of my tutoring sessions, I am proud to say that I have seen
practices of teaching literacy to an ELL student. The process was challenging at first due
to not knowing where to appropriately begin. Through trial and error I discovered
strategies and activities that supported my students language and literacy development.
We began the sessions with her being able to recognize most letters and sounds and
ended the sessions with her being able to read beginning level books with very little
student teaching in a second grade classroom and N is a student in my class. Due to being
in the classroom full time, I decided to work with her because my cooperating teacher
and I felt that she would benefit greatly from having one-on-one assistance. N and I did
N moved to the United States approximately one year ago. Her parents are
monolingual in their native language of Dari, so N receives most of her practice with
English from school. Ns first grade teacher said that she did not speak at all throughout
the time she was in her class. When N first arrived in my class, she spoke very little,
which I assumed was due to her inability to speak very much in English. After she
became more comfortable in the class and with me, I learned that she could speak well,
but was very shy and timid about doing so. Along with her literacy development, her
confidence in speaking has also flourished in such a short amount of time. She has many
friends and frequently raises her hand to speak in class. This is a great accomplishment
During our first sessions, I was still getting to know N and therefore was unaware
of her level of proficiency in English. Due to also being shy, I struggled to find
appropriate leveled tasks. I chose a couple books from our classroom and began reading
them to her. I asked that she follow along with her finger as I read the words aloud. I
quickly realized this was a difficult task to ask of her due to not being able to recognize
the words simply by me saying them aloud. For our next sessions, I focused only on letter
and sound recognition. We pointed to different letters and said their names and sounds
aloud. She progressed with this very quickly and soon she was able to recognize all of the
letters.
After she had mastered letter recognition, we progressed into practicing how to
form words and read them. I made alphabet cards that had each letter on a card. The
vowels were in one color and the consonants were in another. Although I did not specify
that these cards are vowels and these ones are consonants, I tried to help her visualize
that there are two groups of letters and when we form words we need both. Frequently
she would create words that did not contain vowels so I would remind her that we always
need a pink letter or vowel to complete the word. For example, she would spell dog
like dg so I would remind her that we were missing a pink letter and then she would
There were a few sessions where I felt we had come to a stop and I was not
making progress with N. I felt unsure of where to go with my instruction so that I could
help her more. Before trying to read books, I would spell out different words (usually
about 3 letters long) and then I would ask her to tap on her finger the sound of each letter
and then tap all of the fingers together as you put the sounds together to make the word.
This was a strategy I had seen my CT use and I felt it was beneficial to incorporate
movement to help her put the words together. She had mastered tapping each sound for
the letters, but once we put the sounds together to make the word she repeatedly said,
map. No matter what word we did, her response was, map. For example, she would
tap, s, a, t, and then say, map. I really struggled with understanding where her
confusion was coming from and how to instruct her more clearly.
I ultimately decided to abandon the tapping strategy and decided I needed to try
something else. I began asking her words that she wanted to spell. I learned that she
really loved animals and so we began spelling different types of animal names using
magnetic letters and boards. She began asking to spell words like zebra and snake.
My first instinct was that those words were too challenging, but I decided to practice
those because I wanted to make the learning experience enjoyable. If those were the
words she liked, then those were the words we would learn. She was soon able to
After learning about Ns interest in animals, I found different books that included
her favorite animals. I made sure to find books that were repetitive and included many
pictures to help her decode words. We began with me reading to her first. With the
say the first sound of the word and then I would say the whole word. N soon began
recognizing words and reading on her own. If she ever came across a word she did not
know, we would try to find clues from the pictures. If that did not work, she would just
make the first sound and I would pop (as she liked to call it) in the word for her.
I would have loved to be able to continue working with N for the remainder of the
semester, however this is her last week at my school. Her family will be moving to
another district. I am very proud of all of the progress that N made in her language and
literacy development. I learned that it is very important to make the language learning
process enjoyable for ELL students. I also learned that it is important to be patient and
thrive. I learned that not every strategy works for each student. If a task or strategy is not