Gale_TP#15

Gale Workman

TP#15

Sept. 18, 2014, 6:30 p.m.

Hecht House

It was just Andressa today, as Eranildo emailed he was solving a banking problem and wouldn’t make it to our session.

I had prepared a lesson with an article/graphic on changing seasons (Sept. 23/equinox). I selected this timely astronomy topic because Andressa and Eranildo are in the Science Without Borders program.

Andressa arrived promptly, eager to work, but her face and body posture told a different story. “I had three midterm’s today,” she replied when I asked how classes were going. We both agreed we were tired, so we’d do half the planned lesson and then play a vocabulary/spelling game.

This worked well, especially because Taylor was observing our session and she could play the game with us. I had brought the game thinking Eranildo would be our third player. Always have a Plan B.

I used my calendar to show why the Seasons Changing article was timely and explained that I chose it because Andressa and Eranildo (Brazil) want to be scientists. Andressa read the article aloud, occasionally pausing at words we defined and pronounced. She was taking notes on new words, and she wrote on the article handout.

She understood how to decode words by looking for affixes and words within words. When worked on the word hemisphere –she already new hemi = half. She also understood affixes.

Brazil is in the Southern Hemisphere, and the U.S. is in the Northern Hemisphere. Andressa was able to explain the differences in the seasons changing at her home and in Tallahassee. Her English is improving so quickly!

We skipped the writing part of the lesson to play the Scrabble card game. All three of us took our turns to play a letter card on the board to form a new four-letter word. At the end, as it got harder, we helped each other find ways to play our cards. When a word was introduced, I spoke it (if Andressa didn’t beat me to it), and we would define the word and would use it in example sentences. Andressa added many new high-frequency words