Saturday, December 03, 2005

One-on-one fun

This post is doomed with such a title.

Nevertheless, the topic shall be this week's experiences with my new class and with tutoring.

Finished working on new lesson plans for another class starting up this trimester. I'll teach a new class for the rest of this year in addition to my Eng. Lit and my two Latin classes . This time I'll teach English grammar and writing to a group of middle schoolers. This class will meet twice a week for an hour rather than for one or two hours per week (like my Latin and Lit. classes respectively). Having a class spread out twice every week is, of course, a much better learning situation. This class grew from a need that arose when it became apparent that some students in the Latin 1 class needed more help with their English grammar. Latin has a way of revealing that. I'm pretty excited since I've seen first-hand how effective teaching the Shurley Grammar method along with the Institute for Excellence in Writing can be.

Periodically, I tutor a student who needs extra help in Latin and this week I helped an 8th grade boy with a one-time session. Tutoring is satisfying work with these homeschooled kids, because they want to learn the material and generally just like to learn.

There was another boy I tutored in Latin 1 this week as well. This guy is a 6th grader who was very ill last trimester and had to miss four straight weeks of school. During that time, I kept close contact with his mom and assured her that I would tutor Tyler when he felt better. He's been back in class for about 3 weeks and I've been tutoring him every week since then. One cool thing about going over to their house is that Tyler's grandmother lives with them and she speaks almost exclusively Spanish. It's interesting to hear his mom, grandmother, and siblings speaking fluent Spanish to one another in the background. Yesterday I asked his mom if Candace could come over and converse with them since she is currently working extra hard in Spanish to prepare for her up-coming mission trip to Pheonix. The mom was delighted and Candace is eager too. I'll make the arrangements this week.

As long as I'm speaking of tutoring, I also should mention that I give a young lady a guitar lesson every week, too.

So you be the judge. Did this post deserve such a cheesy title?

2 comments:

Amy Thorne said...

Hooray. Cherrio. Hip-hip-something and other such cheers of glee and happiness.

One must never attempt to make the title of one's post as lovely and pulcheritide as one's post itself, for then one will be in a never-ending and eternally-lasting search for perfection which one rarely ever finds on this world of posts, post titles, and ones.

Suzanne said...

Quite right, quite right.