Catherine TS #12

I met with Saeed on Wednesday, June 3 at Starbucks. Saeed was very stressed about his finals and we went over his final assignments. We focused our attention on Saeed's Reading Comprehension assignments, an article about Empire Penguins. He was struggling a lot with comprehending the main idea of the passage. It worried me; we had spent so much of our time practicing writing or conversation in previous sessions. I was determined to make this session worthwhile for him. Perhaps I was too assertive about it; Saeed wanted to do something less challenging. I said, "I'm not leaving here until you can explain to me, in your own words, the main idea of this entire passage." I showed Saeed reading strategies, including how to number the paragraphs, and how to create a reading log. The reading log was a t-chart. One he left there was the paragraph number; on the right, the 5 W's (who, what, when, where, and why). We filled out the chart for the first two paragraphs. The remaining 5 paragraphs, I monitored Saeed, as he completed it on his own. Once we finished, I had Saeed revisit the comprehension questions at the end of the passage. He successfully answered all of them! He wasn't too happy with me, however. At least, that is what I think because he's cancelled on all of our tutoring sessions since.