Speaking of how my students perceive me as their teacher, it reminds me of this one story my student told me a couple of weeks ago. This student has been with me for over a year and she told me a funny story about how her dad described me to his friend - "my daughter has a special kind of tutor that teaches her in a fun and weird ways. She really likes how she teaches because she uses alot of games and fun activities!! " After I heard that, I was thinking to myself "hmmm....weird ways....lol". I like getting feedback from parents and students. It helps me become a better tutor....always learning from them and improving myself as an OG Tutor.
Somehow all my students find that writing on the whiteboard is fun. They just love to scribble on it whenever they have a chance to. I thought I show off this drawing that my student (grade 2) drew of me and her. My student is the one with the nice bow-tie in her hair. It's really nice to see pictures of how children perceive me - their tutor. This can be a fun activity for those who loves to draw, ask them to draw a picture of you and have them describe it to you (record it). In a few months, have them draw a picture of you and them again and ask them again to describe you and compare it to the first impression.
Speaking of how my students perceive me as their teacher, it reminds me of this one story my student told me a couple of weeks ago. This student has been with me for over a year and she told me a funny story about how her dad described me to his friend - "my daughter has a special kind of tutor that teaches her in a fun and weird ways. She really likes how she teaches because she uses alot of games and fun activities!! " After I heard that, I was thinking to myself "hmmm....weird ways....lol". I like getting feedback from parents and students. It helps me become a better tutor....always learning from them and improving myself as an OG Tutor.
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Teaching the Affix Tree - suffixes, prefixes, words, roots - the study of words - morphology. I created our classroom Affix Tree where students get to hang leaves onto it after they have learned the affix. I created this with a glass bottle and a few twigs found outside my house. I wrapped the bottom part of the bottle with brown construction paper and labeled it words. I bought some cloth red leaves (suffix) and green leaves (prefix) to label the affixes. Some of the leaves hanging in the picture beside are: un, pre, non, ness, less, ly, es, s, ty, ed. I poked a hole with a small paper clip to hang them onto the branches. I have this tree always displayed in the tutor centre. Once every month I take the leaves down from the tree and have them hang it back and tell me the meaning of each affix. It is a great review game. It has been very rewarding watching my students improve over the span of months using the OG tutoring method. I incorporate a lot of non-traditional methods using games, singing, drawing and large movement activities to help them learn new concepts. Working with children with learning difficulties, you need to be quick with your feet to keep students engaged to what they are learning. As an OG tutor, I had to learn to be more flexible and open minded. Trying to keep them on a task during the one hour session can be a struggle.
At times, the student maybe having a bad week or day and come to tutor all worn out and just not ready to listen. I have games readily available and at anytime I feel that the student has either worked really hard on an activity or just look really out of it then I just put everything aside to either play a game or just jump around and be silly. This is a hard thing for most teachers/tutors because I think most feel like if they take the time to play games it'll ruin the lesson. Don't worry you are doing a great job!!! Play games, let them jump around and make funny faces for 2 mins....I bet they will say they never had a teacher that would let them do that!!! lol!! Over years of personal experience and teaching, children respond well with fun activities. So why not make learning fun with games, drawing, singing and movement. I know this is not something they teach you in school when you are getting trained.....as you loosen up, it will show the child to be more acceptable of learning. Most students who needs one-to-one tutor lessons are already discouraged that learning is hard .... why not help them change their perspective first and show them the possibilities of multisensory learning!!! Learning can be fun and silly at the same time. It is not only about sitting down and reading/writing about something. For learning the syllable concept, it is great to find fun & interactive visuals to help students understand phonemic awareness. I use this clapping monkey (which I bought from a dollar store) to help them differentiate how many syllables are in a word. For example, I will start with saying my name - Dora - monkey claps two times. My student's name - Courtenay - monkey claps 2 times. Then move on to a 3 syllable word and then a word with more syllables. This will help them understand the meaning of syllables and the beginning of teaching the 6 main syllables in OG lessons- open syllable, closed syllable, v-e syllable, vowel team syllable, 'c'le syllable, r controlled syllable. For further extension on learning this concept, you give them a pile of pennies, tin can and some words on cue cards. Say the word aloud on the cue-card and ask them to put a penny in the tin can when they hear a syllable. For example: government - throw 3 pennies inside the can. Then ask them to look into the can - how many pennies did you throw in the tin? each penny will represent a syllable. The sound of clinging when they drop their pennies into the tin reinforces the syllable concept. Last week, my sister in laws was cleaning up their house and they gathered some materials that they thought would be useful for my OG Tutor. I just wanted to share how they gave me like 40 mini stamps. I used them the other day for creative writing. I let the student randomly choose 10 of them and create a picture with them. Then they had to write a short story on the picture. Today in my multisensory math class, I will let the students use them to help in visualizing the addition concept. These little treasures are really useful in helping the student be engaged in the lesson. I'm always trying to keep their interest and make it fun. Also stamps are good for improving fine motor skills - especially these tiny ones. I have a 'UN' bag with things that the student will need to do - unpin, unfold (towel), uncap (bottles), unwrap, unbox, untie, unstick, etc. This is done as an exercise for mastery of the meaning of 'un' - not. We take turns picking out an 'un' action to do. When we do each action, we need to say 'I am unwrapping the cards. Now it is not wrapped.' This repetition will help the students learn the meaning of 'un'. This exercise can also help in practicing the tenses - present/past/future tense. For this sound, the keyword is bird. As an exercise I took some shredded tissue and put it into my ELEFUN machine. I gave my student and myself a copy of a bird shadow. I told her that this bird lost all his hair and we have to find them in the ELEFUN machine and help him stick it back on. On each hair I have a 'ir' sound word. We will catch the hair in our nets and carry them back to our picture. Both me and the student say the word on each hair and stick it back onto the bird. At the end we compare which bird is hairier....lol. As an extension exercise, you could also create a story with all the 'ir' sound words and involves the bird. Rukshuk is a fun game I play with students. It is a game of balancing rocks, adding points together and pronunciation of the formation's names. I bought this game from Chapters bookstore after when I heard from another OG Tutor how this game uses the 4 senses: visual, auditory, verbal and kinesthetic/tactile to practice math/language. If you are creative you could actually paint some rocks different colors and give it a point system. For each rock formation you can make up a nonsense word that has a minimum of 3 syllables. You will be amazed how rocks can be entertaining and educational for children of all ages. After becoming an OG tutor I see alot of the children's toys differently. I'm constantly asking myself - how I can use it for one of my lessons? When I'm at flea markets it is like I'm in my dream world. I love looking at old toys/ figurines - I find that toys made when I was young are so much more detailed and usually last alot longer. One way I use the figurines is for blending drills. I have them hold the figurine and make different blending combinations. The picture on the left shows how a student uses a toy for the 'tch' blending drill. I found the witch figurine from the Wizard of Oz for the blending drill 'tch'. I ask the student to hold the witch (the keyword for 'tch' sound) and see how many combinations she/ the witch can make. It helps them be engaged in the activity and making the connections using different senses- kinesthetic/tactile, verbal, sight, hearing - being multisensory as much as possible!! An exercise we completed after teaching the sound 'ow'....we created our own Snow Show using 10 'ow' words. The assignment was to use these words to create a story. We took turns to film each other and decided to post it up so people can see how we created our funny stories using 'ow' words. This activity helped the student get practice with the new sound 'ow', composition skills (written) and verbal skills.
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AuthorDora Cheung - Certified OG Tutor, Masters of Educ. Admin., Early Childhood Education, +20 yrs of teaching experience. Married with 3 boys - 13 yrs, 11 yrs and 8 yrs old. Archives
December 2019
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