Lori TP-3

For my third tutoring lesson, I visited PAEC to work with a group of students learning English during a summer camp program. I'm not going to lie, I was instantly overwhelmed! The class was comprised of what appeared to be forty over-caffeinated children, but then again I don't work with kids a lot, so maybe that is what they are normally like. Boy did I catch on fast though! Attempting to read every word on every page, sounding them out, quickly turned into trying to retain attention long enough for the most important sentences. Half of the time this wasn't even accomplished. But I did feel like I made some progress, and I had fun in the process.

This experience helped me to once more readjust everything I thought I knew about teaching. Funny how the more you practice the more you realize you need even more. What seemed like an easy beginning of having the students read one word at a time, quickly broke even further down to sounding out exercises. The exercises however are apparently not the most entertaining thing to do, and resulted in hilarious guess attempts and nothing else! I was amazed and completely entertained by the guesses I received.

Finally I resorted to operation part-summarize, part-theatrics to make the story more appealing. Once I picked up the Mom voice and incorporated craziness into the teaching lesson to keep the students attention, the experience went a lot easier. Soon I collected a few more students and we all were reading about the adventures of pirates, zoo animals, and pink fluffy monsters under beds. I really had a great time and am looking forward to a few more visits this week as well as next.