Journal #6 -- Mar. 2nd, 2011

Journal #6

March 2nd, 2011

8:30-10:30am (2 hours)

Today, I had prepared some English related lessons but we did not get to these because Oscar asked me to help him with some of his other homework. He needed help with some algebra again and he also needed help studying for a test in his English class. We spent the first hour working on math. Oscar had moved from adding and subtracting polynomials to multiplying polynomials. He had a worksheet that had all three forms of problems on it. He did very well on the adding and subtracting but was always thrown off when he needed to multiply. He explained to me that they took so long, and there were so many steps that he often got confused about which step came next. We worked through some of the problems together and I needed to explain to Oscar that all the steps he had learned were necessary and important. We tried to think of some ways that he might be able to remember how to do them in the right order. He determined the only way to remember was to keep practicing. So, he continued to work on his worksheet and by the end was getting most of his answers correct. Basically, I was there to help him through the little mistakes he made and to go over his answers for him. Once again he was required to say “will you please check this” before I would look over any of his answers.

In the second hour I helped Oscar study for his English test. He was being tested on past tense irregular verbs such as taught, thought, went and several others. He knew the words that were going to be on the test, but had some trouble pronouncing the words that had “gh” in them. No matter what the word was, Oscar always made the “f” sound when he saw these two letters which more often than not was not the case for correct pronunciation in the words he had. So, we talked about the sound these letters made in these words. Then, I challenged Oscar to write down the past tense of a word I would give him. So I would say “teach” and Oscar would write taught. After working on writing, listening and saying these words our time was up. Oscar told me he was confident he would do well on his test and seemingly didn’t want to leave. It’s a nice feeling to be able to help Oscar. Today, I didn’t feel as helpful as I have on other days but when Oscar walks away feeling confident than I know something good has happened.

I love that Oscar is not afraid to speak to me anymore. He still seems afraid to speak English to others around him but is really opening up and starting to feel very confident when around me. Even if I present a challenging task he just smiles and goes along with it rather than shrugging away in embarrassment. I am glad, I believe Oscar is moving forward, he is ready to speak English and finds excitement in some of the games and activities we’ve done together.