Semester Reflection

          So far, the last couple months of tutoring with my learner have been going quite well. We have bonded well together and have become closer as tutor and learner. This bonding has helped us better understand each other and has increased our potential to work together as a team. I think we have achieved a lot so far. I am happy with all of our progress and I believe my learner has been pleased with everything we've done. We've already blown through two thirty page mathematics book and we are almost finished with two other reading and writing workbooks.

          When we first met, my learner specified that she wanted to focus mainly on improving her mathematics skills along with sentence and paragraph formation. Since then, we have focused mainly on building these skills and I have seen a great improvement. She has done well with the mathematics but is still uneasy when it comes to writing. I remembered when we first started writing, I asked her to write a little about herself and her family. She was very hesitant and nervous to show me her writing abilities. I was trying to get a good evaluation of where she stood as a writer but it was hard because of her disinterest in writing. As we progressed through the following weeks I realized that her ability to write was there but she struggled to get these ideas down and paper and express her thoughts. So, we started working on brainstorming her thoughts. We practiced outlining and I showed her different ways to get her ideas, which she all had in her head, down on paper. This was something she was never shown before and found this new outlining conception to be extremely useful. This strategy has improved her ability to write dramatically and she can now formulate long paragraphs and sentences all on her own.

          As we head into the next semester I plan to continue our success at the CFL and strengthen my learners ability to write and complete more complex math problems. I think we have grown together as a tutor and learner and this has enabled us to work on more and more things and complete material at a faster rate. I look forward to the coming weeks and am excited to see the growth in my learners ability as we work on more challenging material.