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Tamika Berezniak

LLSS 459-002

Garcia

November 15, 2017

Tutoring Reflection

Over the course of my tutoring sessions, I am proud to say that I have seen

tremendous growth in language development from my student, as well as in my own

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

support from me.

I am unsure if it is appropriate to use my students name in my reflection, so to

maintain her anonymity I will refer to her as N. I am currently in my final semester of

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

about 15-20 minutes sessions four days a week.

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

that I feel very proud of her for.

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

add the o to complete dog.

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

memorize many animal names, including zebra and snake.

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

suggestion of a reading recovery teacher at my school, we began reading where N would

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

encouraging. Students need the encouragement to build their confidence in order to

thrive. I learned that not every strategy works for each student. If a task or strategy is not

working, try something else.

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