I tutored the kids again today. It was all pretty normal, but at reading time, I gave The Jungle Books a try with the girl reading a section aloud. There were some words she didn't know, but she's determined to read it so she can find out what happened. Music to my ears! She may be a reader yet! I told her wanting to know what happens next in a story is called "suspense," and it's what makes reading fun. I think till now, the reading she has done was factual or silly fairy tales that didn't really engage her, and finally, Kipling (of all authors!) is grabbing hold of her. This is an 8-year-old girl who speaks English as a second language! I can't believe she did so well. Actually, I told her it would be hard going, that it's not really written for kids, and warned her that I'd read it aloud if she found it too difficult. That challenge may have inspired her to spend so much energy on reading it. At the end of the first chapter -- Mowgli is raised by wolves, a bear and panther befriend him and teach him, and then Shere Kahn, the evil tiger, who has always wanted to have Mowgli for dinner, influences some of the wolf pack to turn against him, and that means he has to go back to the humans -- the girl asked, "Will he find his mother?" I said we'd have to wait and see. But she said, "You read this already, so you know." But I wouldn't tell, just repeating what I said about suspense.
The next chapter goes back in time to when Mowgli was younger and still learning all he can from Baloo, the bear, about jungle ways and how to speak to all the different animals. I wonder if the girl will be disappointed that she won't get to see right away what happens to Mowgli among his own kind, a boy raised by wolves, so he has no idea of human ways. And will he finally kill Shere Kahn, the sly tiger who wants him dead?
My mother read this story to me when I was little, and I doubt I've read it since, so I hardly remember all the details myself. If the girl remains interested, it should be fun for both of us.
I then tutored the new girl for the 2nd time. She did her homework, except that I asked her to write the alphabet again, and she didn't do it. I emphasized that she should do it -- maybe she forgot, and I should have written it down -- and gave that sheet back to her. She tried to find the ABC song on YouTube but said she could only find where people spoke the alphabet, so she practiced singing it w/o a guide. She was off tune, but otherwise knew it pretty well, and she sang along with me much better. We got her iPad and looked for a suitable site. I wish she had email so I could send her a link I looked up at home. I hate to take precious tutoring time doing stuff like that. Still, I taught her how to look at all the sites that came up on YouTube and select the one she thought was most useful.
Interesting that this girl is in the same grade and same school that the other girl is in, and they are so different in skill. One is reading Kipling, and the other is still learning the alphabet and how to sound out words.
Today, I introduced the concept of verbs to the new girl. There were sentences on a worksheet, and she had to circle the verbs. She needed a lot of help, and some words in the sentences she didn't know, so they became vocabulary words. She did her first fill-in-the-blanks sheet, which I make up for the kids of words they didn't know in their reading. We are also going through Dolch word lists to see what basic words she needs to know. I started the first lesson with preschool, and she knew all of them, so this lesson she had 1st grade Dolch words, and she didn't know one, and next, we'll do the 2nd grade list. She speaks a lot more clearly than the original boy and girl at the same level of work. Interesting. She can even say the "th" sound, which still gives the boy a bit of trouble. He wants to pronounce it as an "f." When I correct him, he can say it, but old habits die hard.
The little one still hasn't learned "giraffe," which I've dealt with a couple of times now. And today, we went up to the kitchen to see the refrigerator and learn that word. I have a picture of it, but he wasn't sure what it was, so I took him to see a real one. Grandma was in the kitchen (unfortunately for her clean floor, mopping the floor, which we walked across), but she was interested in learning the word, too. She told me when she was in China, learning English some 30 years ago, no one had a refrigerator, so that word never came up in vocabulary. So in the car on the ride to Ithaca, I taught her to pronounce "refrigerator," breaking it down into syllables and speaking clearly and slowly. She said it almost perfectly after my coaching, but while talking about them, the word disintegrated into her strong accent. I wish I could teach all the adults to lose their accents! They are sometimes hard to understand, especially the new girl's mom. Maybe I'll get used to her in time, and it'll get easier.
