Gale_TP#6

Gale Workman

TP#6

Sept. 9, 2014, 6:30 p.m.

Hecht House

Daree practiced tae kwan do daily in Qatar for seven years. He continues his practice while at FSU. He is animated when speaking about taekwando, so checked out a book from the public library about martial arts that had a short chapter with photos about tae kwan do.

Daree is Foundations level, so I selected a children’s book at the third-grade reading level. It was perfect! Daree enjoyed the book so much that, at the end of our session, he used his phone to photograph the two-page chapter he had read. He said he wanted to review the chapter on his own.

The session began with me introducing the book to Daree. I said I checked it out of the library because I wanted him to read it to me and to teach me about taekwondo.

We started learning right away with the title of the book, “Martial Arts in Action.” Daree learned the term “martial arts” as a category of fighting methods. We used the table of contents to read this category contains tae kwan do, karate, kung fu, jujitsu, judo, aikido and more.

Daree listed new vocabulary words in his notebook. At the end of class he had more than 10 new words on his list. He wrote each word, repeated it several times (with my correcting his pronunciation until he got it right), then we discussed the definition – often standing in the middle of the room to demonstrate.

As we read through the chapter, which used English for tae kwon do terms, Daree explained to me that he uses the Korean terms when he practices tae kwon do. He knows Arabic translations for the terms, but he and his friends use Korean terms. Daree said he was happy to learn English words for these terms, too.

This lesson worked great because Daree enjoyed reading the book (just challenging enough, but easy enough that he could be successful). Daree enjoyed teaching me about tae kwon do – really challenged his listening and speaking. The lesson was physically active – we never sat more than a few minutes at a time.