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.

week six

This week I spent approximately 2 hours with student going over linear equations with slope intercepts problems. Learning sessions took place while at home with minimal distractions. Student was having problems with understanding the linear equations of point slope and slope intercept formulas.  The tutoring took place over 3 different sessions M, T and TR.

I continued to work with student on algebra and some social studies work. I did talk to student about his group studies at school. He had a high opinion of them in his anatomy class saying his teacher makes it fun and sometimes has competition with it. He showed  dislike for it in his other classes as he states that they are mismatched groups, and teacher doesn’t interact when doing projects.

As I only have the one student I am not able to use group participation to but I can speak from my past experiences. The biggest issue as stated prior was that it is sometimes hard to get everyone to participate. I have also had some good experiences with group participation as long as everyone had participated and was clearly motivated. I believe when completing team tasks all can well when it is considered a normality to work in groups. If (in college) many students don’t trust or know the group members well enough to always want to give it 100%.

This week I spent approximately 3 hours with student going over linear equations with slope intercepts problems. Learning sessions took place while at home with minimal distractions. Student was having problems with understanding the linear equations of point slope and slope intercept formulas.  The tutoring took place over 3 different sessions M, T and TR. 

Student wasn’t getting the concept of Y = MX + B given one or two points. I asked him to plot several points on different sheets of graphing paper. He wanted to estimate by slope by counting squares. I told him to graph the 3 slopes his way while I used the slope intercept form to do the same three points. I was finished in approximately 3 minutes while he spent 7-10 minutes on the counting of squares and estimating the slope. After comparing answers, He got 1 out of three correct and I got all three correct. Student worked with M= y2-y1/x2-x1 to slope and plug this in to either point using y=mx+b formula. 

I felt confident that after going through the above mentioned steps that he understood the linear equation to solve slope intercept by using the correct formula. What I could improve on is maybe expanding this lesson into using more points. Slope intercept is pretty straight forward and seems it may be hard to improve on.

The challenges I worked through was habits of trying to read the chart without using the formula. What seemed practical to student wasn’t correct and using an interactive approach and alternative ideas to student seemed to work as discussed in this week’s article. I also believe I worked in changing the student model as discussed in week four’s article altogether changing his perception on how to get the correct answer.

13 Sept 2012,

This week I spent two hours with student going over human anatomy again from previous week. Again the learning sessions took place while at home with minimal distractions. Human anatomy requires memorization and functions of assigned organs and systems’ expanding from what was learned from last week. We spent an hour on human anatomy on two different days spending some time on the cards from previous week. 

  

When talking to student, I asked if he could tell me by elaborating on the subject human anatomy. I could see his hands moving over specific parts of the body identifying specific muscle groups and the locations of major organs as he started to go through the function of each. I believe the student gains strong form of mental model when working with the subject, but has to be directed into this form. At the beginning of his anatomy class he struggled to even put into perspective the location of these groups. I believe that his mental model has expanded, because now he asks questions as to “what if” I breathed in dust or smoke, actually visualizing what the particles are doing to his body.

Being that this is fairly new to me, I think I understand the concept but trying to match to every situation can be a bit difficult. I believe this works well on subjects that require more technical or complex problem solving vs. English or Art classes.  

I believe I reacted better after understanding the principles of the mental model and my approach to different ways to interact with student and expand on student’s model. I think that by understanding his model, and having a clear precise plan to what needs to be taught and learned that we can both better ourselves. It was hard to tell if the lessons made an impact yet or not but as mentioned above I see that he is thinking differently trying to put things together.