Apparrently, Cal no longer has a computer to work on, and hurt his wrist over the weekend and couldn't write, which made class today very difficult. I decided to work on verb form worksheets, with Cal dictating the answers and me writing them out for him. This was not an effective system as it gave Cal plenty of opportunities to waste time with silly/frivolous answers.
Cal again did not have his computer today, so I didn't want to have him do any writing. Consequently, we continued working on verb agreement by focusing on tenses and verb tense agreement. Cal worked through 3 worksheets, and although he had a little trouble at the start, he quickly got the hang of it.
I had Cal write the con paragraph about olympic hockey to start the class. He wrote a solid paragraph. We spent the rest of the class going over verb agreement, and Cal completed 3 worksheets with little trouble. HIs attitude and focus were good.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
He's definitely gotten much easier to work with over the last week, and got right to work to start the class with minimal complaints.
I had Cal writing paragraphs today, and for the first time, instead of trying to argue his way out of it, he pretty much got right down to work. I had him write about professional hockey players in the Olympics, and although the goal was to write a pro and a con essay, he only finished the former. But, finally able to talk about the content of writing, rather than the structure, which is something Cal needs to work on. He doesn't have an opinion about most things, or get excited about much, so his writing up till now has focused on getting to the end of it, instead of developing an idea. By the end he had written a solid paragraph about why the pros should still play in the Olympics.
I'm still having difficulty getting Cal to write anything more than a couple of sentences. His understanding of sentence structure has improved, but he refuses to apply that to writing larger body paragraphs. We moved on to subject/verb agreement and he had no problem with the material.
Cal still needs to work on using sentence structure to improve the flow of his writing. We continued the exercise from friday, and he seemed to do much better. HIs effort and focus have improved, but he still has a long way to go.
Cal and I had a good talk about our class and what I expect of him. He was still a bit resistant when I asked him to write paragraphs, so I decided to take a step back. Instead, I had him pick a topic, and then write an example of the 4 types of sentences on that topic with a a logical flow of ideas. (basically a paragraph). At first, he kept trying to finis a shortcut, but once he realized that wasn't going to work, he started to do pretty well. It was a great exercise to demonstrate how it is much more effective to write that way than with his short, choppy sentences.
Cal goes out of his way to get out of doing any work. I told him last week that he would be writing about his camping weekend today, and I asked him to have three different topics to write about. He still spent 10 minutes trying to get out of it. When I finally did get him to start writing, it was with the specific goal of incorporating the different types of sentences we've been working on the last couple of weeks. Cal then wrote in exceptionally short, choppy sentences so he could say that each paragraph had 5 sentences. In short, it was a hard struggle to get him to put any effort into it, and in the end, not a lot of productive work was done.
Cal did not have his computer again today, so instead of writing paragraphs (my plan), I had him work on worksheets to review the material we've covered the last couple of weeks. When he's doing the worksheets, Cal has a strong understanding of the material and rarely more than a few question. We'll see how he incorporates that into his writing next week.
If Cal spent half as much energy into doing work as he does trying to get out of it, I think he could make a lot of progress. I planned to spend the first part of class having him write 3 sets of 10 sentences, but he spent so much time stalling and dragging his feet, it ended up taking the whole class. He's making good progress in learning the grammar, but we still need to work on his effort.
