I am a tutor. I am striving for a teaching position for next school
year; that is my heart's desire but in the mean time I have been a tutor
for about a year and a half. It has helped and been a blessing since I
finished student teaching. I have learned just about as much as my
students. Now in order to link up we have to give a tip and a resource that we use. Here is mine!!
Okay, I mainly work with students on their reading. Majority have issues with phonics and have pieces to the puzzle that are missing or weak. They also have issues with knowing their sight words. These skills are crucial to becoming a excellent reader. That is where I come in. I perform pre-assessments so that I know where to begin and what skills are weak. We start right to work on those skills.
Since little minds have a short attention span, I have hands-on activities that we do. I feel that making learning fun takes the boredom out of learning. Learning takes place without their knowing it if you make it fun. We do reading practice, some worksheets (not many), file folder games, board games, card games, and creative activities.
One strategy that I use when we do play games, like sight word cards or file folder games, is that I fake that I am frustrated when I am losing. I tell them that their goal is to get more cards or pieces than me and to try to beat me at whatever game we play and boy do they try their best to do that. If they get it wrong, then the card or pieces is mine. They get so tickled because their pile is growing and mine is not that they just explode with laughter. They are having FUN! Now, for certain games, like sight words, I make sure that I have a lot more cards in the pile that they know plus a few of the ones that we are working on. My goal is that their pile has more than mine but they do not know that. I want them to be motivated to learn. Sometimes a healthy competition is a good thing!!
One of my resources that I use is my making words printable. I have two so far. This printable reinforces phonics skills by making words using onset and
rime (word families). Each child will pick a mat. They will also pick
four letters to put on their cones or trees. Those will be the beginning sound
of their words. All scoops and ornaments should be turned over on the table. When it
is their turn, they will turn over an ice cream scoop or ornament. If they can make a
word using one of their letters, they can keep it. If they
can’t, they put it back. When they get the predetermined amount of
scoops on their cone or ornaments on their tree, then that column is done. Their goal is to fill
all the cones with ice cream scoops and trees with ornaments.
Toodles,
