Time to tell about tutoring today.
Last time, I got tired of the boy insulting his sister. I lectured him about it, and when he called her an idiot in the car today, I rather forcefully told him I wouldn't stand for it anymore. I told him it's rude, and I didn't want him to be a rude person. Then (no help at all) his sister asked how to spell "idiot." I told her, and she practiced spelling it out loud several times. Kids are so weird sometimes!
At their house, I had to remind the boy several times, once very strictly, not to call his sister names. We are going to have some sort of lesson about that, but I can't quite figure out how yet. It's a form of bullying, and I can do a lesson on that. There's lots of sibling rivalry going on there, and I'd like to help defuse it somehow. I'm not a psychologist, though, and I'm not sure how much good I can do. But I can certainly curb his verbal abuse while I'm in hearing distance. I think the competitiveness between the kids is part of this whole thing, too. I've said before that I'd like to tone that down and get them working together more, but that'll be a long, slow process, IMHO.
First, we played Scrabble. This was good for the boy, since he needs his ego bolstered. Part of his problem is that his little sister is a better student than he is. They are both smart kids, but she is a hard worker, and the boy is a bit lazy. Anything that takes effort, he wants to quit when it gets hard.
So he was much better at understanding the game's concept than his sister. She is a little young yet for it, I'm afraid. She had trouble neatly putting down the tiles, and they often got out of alignment, and I had to keep straightening them. And she had trouble understanding that the word had to be laid out as you read it, not like a word search, where it can be backwards. She also kept wanting to put words down that would bump into other letters that didn't spell anything. In other words, she was confused enough that I had to do a lot of helping and explaining why a word wouldn't work. The boy caught onto the idea immediately.
So then we did word searches. I personalized the word searches with their vocab words, and they liked that. I used old vocab words, and the boy knew them easily. He really has come a long way. So I let them compete and do the same word search made for the boy. Who finished first would win, and it was the boy this time! He really needs to beat his sister at some of the games more. In fact, while doing the word search, he had trouble finding the last word (it's always the hardest to find), and he wanted to give up, and tried to be annoying and distract his sister, who was a few words behind but plugging away at it. I told him if he quit before finishing, his sister would win by default. I also pointed out that his sister was likely to beat him, even though he had found more words at that point, because she was working at it instead of fooling around. That worked. He then went back to trying to find the last word and win. Meanwhile, his sister had caught up to him, and she was looking for the last word, too. But the boy found his first and won. Maybe it was because they were words he was more familiar with, which gave him an edge. His sister is usually really good at word searches.
By then, it was almost time to stop. We did a Mad Libs, and then I left.
Next lesson, I want them to do more reading. We've been fooling around playing word games, but it's time to get back on track. The girl liked the reading comprehension exercises, where you read something and then there are questions to write answers to. But what about her brother, who didn't want to do that? Aha! I got an idea this evening. He likes outrageous things, so I decided to have him read about Manneken Pis, a statue/fountain in Brussels of a nude little boy ....... It's just shocking enough to attract him, I think. I copied the legends about it from Wikipedia, which will have some complicated words for him to learn, but they are stories, so maybe they'll be more fun than history.
Well maybe your luck will change and you'll win the current Smokeless Image contest. I'm rooting for you or lizzie. I think she posted a few pics too.
