Today I was in the education group. We went to the school campus and tutored the children who are struggling with English and math. The program is great because not only do they know exactly which child is struggling with what, but each child gets one-on-one attention from a volunteer. The child would never get this in a government school. We would work with each child for 20 minutes and then switch. This was fun for me too because it is rare that you get the chance to be with a kid alone (usually a bunch of kids are fighting for your attention). These little kids are tough nuggets. Most of the children learn from memorization what a word means so when it comes to reading comprehension, they sometimes have a gap in their understanding. For example, they see the word “house” and they say “home” or they see the word “purr” and they say “meow”. So we encourage them to sound out the word instead of just memorizing the appearance… All is going well UNTIL the poor little fellow says “nee-igg-he-bor”, then they just think you are crazy when you tell them it is pronounced neighbor. My favorite part of the day was when you could actually see a difference. For example, when a child would struggle with a word over and over… you would help them each time, then later in the book they easily read the word and don’t even realize that 5 minutes ago it was tough business. That is the best!!! Even though it is one word at a time, it is so exciting to see them learn!
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