Al has made a lot of progress, but is now confronted with a different type of writing. I'm confident he's in good shape to write facts of the case, but in this instance, he was asked to right a summary of multiple articles. The material was very dense and difficult, and it's logical that he would have trouble with it. We went through it step by step and I showed him how to simplify the process.
Clay and I had a very good introductory conversation. I read the story he's been working on to get a sense of where he's at with his writing, and I had him read a little to gauge his reading level. He's very low skilled in reading and consequently doesn't like to read or write. We talked about reading on a regular basis, and I recommended that he read and article on ESPN every day. We then started working on basic sentence structure and knowing the difference between a complete sentence and a sentence fragment. My plan is to start at the very basic level and build Clay's skills up.
Review notes for narrative - "My Best Vacation Ever" - read/discuss rough draft at this point - continue rough draft. Go to computer lab to find pictures for narrative - for example, the war museum, Oxford University, double-decker buses, etc. to include in the personal narrative. Will was excited finding the pictures. He commented on them...remembering his trip to London. He is doing a good job with this assignment.
Review notes - Thanksgiving in London, England. Add more details and begin writing rough draft. Discuss importance of specific adjectives, adverbs, and verbs. Will remembered more details about his trip and was engaged in the writing process. He seems more interested and involved this year.
Al really has come a long way in a very short time. I think the last major component he needed was learning to truly focus when proofreading. Apparently his supervisor has already told him he's made great improvement. Today we focused on proofreading again. His recognition of grammatical mistakes and awkward phrasing has gotten much better.
Al is really starting to get the hang of the more direct and concise style of writing. He understands the basic rules of grammar we've covered, the trick now is getting him to recognize his mistakes. I realized there might be a breakdown in his proofreading, so today we focused on the that. It turns out that he does have an issue. He's so focused on the "facts" of what he's writing, that he passes over the minutia. He actually read multiple grammatically incorrect sentences as correct. This is really a matter of practice and focusing on the details.
Al has a done a good job of absorbing everything we've discussed, but needs to continue to work on applying it to his writing. He's gotten more concise, but is still having problems with sentence structure and verb tense.
Al brought in a new sample and his sentence structure has improved. We worked on focusing on one topic per paragraph and keeping his sentences as simple and direct as possible. He has a lot of trouble seeing mistakes in his writing.
It was a very productive first meeting with Al. He has definite issues with sentence structure, verb tense, and proofreading. We went through a writing sample he brought, and identified multiple areas to work on. Most importantly though is teaching him to write in a concise manner and maintain consistency throughout.
We started today's session by working on some new spelling words focusing on vowel sounds in the middle of words. Jackson wrote these new words in sentences and we made new flashcards to tape to his wall that he illustrated. Afterwards we discussed persuasive writing. I gave Jackson a lot of different prompts that he read and chose from and he started filling out a persuasive writing graphic organizer to organize his ideas.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Jackson has trouble with the middle vowel sounds in these new words but after discussing and making sure he was listening and watching me say the words he was able to guess most of the sounds. Hopefully this skill will help him improve his reading.
