Week 12

This week I spent two hours with student going over contemporary studies from previous week. Again the learning sessions took place while at home with minimal distractions.

We finished up with his essay on electricity and were able to go over MLA formatting that was required by the assignment. We also talked of all the studies sessions we held overall and I asked what was more helpful and what wasn’t when completing his work.

I understand the concepts that we all studied and in trying to simulate the reading to his study time we were able to find out what worked best with my student. The biggest breakthrough I had with the student, is understanding his “student model.” By understanding how he understands and works problems out we were able to make good progress. He said that; understanding, fairness, preparedness, and knowing the students from my list were the most helpful to him and what he appreciated the most.

I believe by understanding the principles of the mental model and my approach to different ways to interact with student that I was able to be successful.

Week 11

This week I spent approximately 2.5 hours with student going over functions (Fx) in algebra and a little in bit of contemporary studies. Learning sessions took place while at home with minimal distractions. The tutoring took place over 2 different sessions M and TR.

Student was starting to understand the concept of functions and was making good progress with his homework. I believe that every study session we hold works in correlation with multiple intelligence; helping the student retain what they have learned. We have always worked on ways to understand a problem vs. memorizing it for a specific test. By working on retaining he has been able to go back and reflect on other problems and rationalize and understand how he came to a solution.

I feel confident that the student does not try to memorize anymore, but rather uses a hands on approach to solving problems and then reworking the problem in order to understand it in a clearer sense. What I could improve on is maybe trying each of the eight intelligences, to see if there is one that benefits him more.

I really didn’t run into any challenges with this session. I believe that student is more confident and understands more now that before his techniques and strategies to understand and complete homework.

Week 10

This week I spent a total of three hours with student going over searching Contemporary Studies, Algebra and his Honors English class. Session took place at home using book and internet sites to aid in the completion of homework. For his report in Contemporary Studies we listed the criteria for his report in one column and his beliefs on the subject in the other. I also asked him to list his interpretations and what he might have heard or his in subject area from friends and or any readings he may have done.

Student needs to complete a summary essay on electricity and the origins of how, when and why. His beliefs were that when Thomas Edison had found out how to create electricity that each state started to create their own. After doing some reading and internet searches, he learned that he was only partially right in regards to who created or exploited the potential of electricity. He found out that Tesla, once working for Thomas Edison and working on a different current system was the actual true inventor to the electricity of today. He also learned that once invented, only a few places (major cities) had electricity and that many of the rural cities didn’t receive electricity until in some cases the 1960’s.

One problem that we ran into was so many people say something on a subject that one may have the tendency to take it as truth. Scientific Inquiry in this instance isn’t about discovering something but rather to research and pull facts from fiction. He learned that it was once thought that Edison was the creator of electricity (and he was) but Tesla was the creator of the AC/DC current system today that the world relies on.

I believe that our tutoring centered on scientific inquiry as we ciphered through facts and inaccurate beliefs that one holds through word of mouth. I believe this was very helpful in the realization that when one questions the truth or what is thought to be the truth, a person can actually find the answers through research.

Week 10

I worked on Math, Social studies (contemporary studies) and English. While working with student I had the student explain the work he was doing and explain to me the instructions on what needed to be completed and how.

By having the student explain to me the instructions, I find that many times he can answer his own questions on the subject area.  This also gives me a better understanding of what is being required from him so that I can better assist him in the direction he needs to go to find the answers. This ultimately forces him to still look for the answers without having me give them to him.

He does well with the homework that he turns in, but often he looks for the same guidance each time. I believe I should let him figure it out first, then make corrections. This takes more time but may be the motivation he needs to be more conscious of the work he is doing.

I believe this is associated with dialogic discourse as to helping him with a problem but letting him ultimately pick the course he takes to get the answer.

week 9

Worked every day this week in 40 - 45 minutes sessions. The student is still on linear equations in Algebra 2, while their teacher is having them learn several ways to solve the problems. Contemporary Studies, and English were other subjects that we worked on during our time. I also received my peer review last night after this weeks sessions.

week 7

This week I spent approximately 1.5 hours with student going over searching the internet sites for types of information that can be useful for studies. Session took place while at home using various search engines and criteria. Student has tendency to find the first material to pop up and use information in his research without checking credentials.

Student needs to come up facts and information using the web to come up with report on prohibition (a topic of his choice). I explained how Wikipedia worked and showed him that the information found is usually correct but not always. Student sometimes wants to take shortcuts which usually result in in accurate accounts of actual events. I gave him a project to find 5 sources with one needing to be from an academic search engine, two from an online news article and two from any online site offering information on the event. The results that came back from the five sources he collected were that two of the five sources were different. He did not know which one to use so I asked him to find at least one more source to see if made any difference in the equation. I feel that he learned how to objectively look at information, research and by finding more information that matches with each other in the case of a report or essay he was able to adequately give and write about factual events.

One of the main problems today with web searches is that there is so many open source sites that allow people to add in information that younger kids find what they are looking for and take it for truth without searching further. The key is to show how students can search more accurately and find differences in opinion and be able to weed out falsities found on websites.

I believe that our tutoring centered around the create an argument article in the way we took information and was able to find accurate and inaccurate information and use only the what pertained to the assignment.