Goal
MR will become familiar with relevant vocabulary words and have a more complete understanding of the main idea of the introduction - bioremediation.
Opening
When MR came in for her first tutoring session she was ecstatic! She walked into my classroom with a full smile and told me that she was ready to have better english. I laid out for her what we were going to be doing this session and also explained to her the goal. Additionally, I asked MR if she had ever been taught any reading or writing strategies. At first she told me she has vaguely heard of them but could not identify what any of them were. Once I began to show her some of them, she said she remembered using a graphic organizer one time in her English class but has never used any strategies outside of that. MR also told me that there are often times when she is reading and comes across words she does not know. When I asked her what she does when this happens, she told me she first tries to use context clues but ends up mostly googling the words to find out their meaning. When she has to do this she quickly gets frustrated and wants to give up reading.
Vocabulary Improvement
After looking at the first draft of MR’s introduction, it was clear she needed support with the advanced vocabulary we use in Biology. Based on her access reading scores, it is likely she has never come across specific Biology terminology before, and so we had to start here to improve her reading and writing.
The list of relevant vocabulary for this lab report can be found, here. MR and myself started by going through this vocabulary and reading the words and definitions aloud. I had MR record what she was saying on her phone so she could go back and listen to it later at home; I thought this would be particularly useful as her listening proficiency score was a 5 (bridging) on the access test. Once MR had read every word and its definition out loud, we began to make flash cards. I had MR write the word and draw a picture of the word on one side of the card; by doing this, it was my hope that MR would be able to tie each word with what it looks like in nature, and be better able to remember it. On the other side of the flash card, I had MR do two things. First, I had her write the definition of the vocabulary term, but doing so in her own words. Additionally, I then had her write a sentence properly using the vocabulary word in it. Doing this allowed MR to make the definition more understandable to her and once again allowed her to better connect to the word by putting it in her own sentence.
Connecting to Main Idea of Bioremediation
Once MR began to have a better understanding of the vocabulary, I wanted her to see how it connected to bioremediation. We first watched a video on plant growth. This video is the most visual I could find, and contained good background information into how a plant grows from a seed into what we see above the soil. I stopped the video about every minute and had MR write down a summary of what she had learned. I also asked her to identify if any of the vocabulary words were used on the flashcards she had made. I followed this same process for two other videos - one about photosynthesis and another one specifically about bioremediation. Additionally, when MR heard a word that she was unfamiliar with, I asked her to write it down. We took these words and made flashcards for them as well.
After watching these videos and writing down the summaries, MR told me that she had a much more complete picture about how plants grow and how they are involved in the bioremediation process.
Circling Back to First Draft of Introduction
I concluded the first tutoring session by having MR read her first draft outloud and recorded it. We then played the audio back so MR could hear how her introduction sounded. She made several faces while listening to it and at the end told me she could do much better. When I asked her what could be improved in it she told me that it was written very choppy, there was not any of the vocabulary words included that we learned today, and that she did not include what bioremediation was.
Homework
I wanted MR to teach her little brother at home about what she learned today. Her homework was to go over all of her flashcards with her brother and to show him the videos we watched, stopping every minute and discussing what they saw.
Additionally, I told her that she was to review her flashcards for about 15 minutes every night until our next tutoring session.