Aurora Borealis Reading Assignment

A student named Mia needed help with her reading assignment, so I offered to help her out. The reading assignment was about the creation of the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights. Mia asked me how the Aurora Borealis was created, so I skimmed through the reading and tried to find the answer. In my mind, I thought I was not supposed to give her the answer but lead her to the right path, but I ended up telling her because that was much easier. Although I am not a paid and experienced tutor, I felt not only embarrassed for choosing the easy way out but also relieved because both Mia and I wanted to finish the assignment quickly. Luckily, the next and last question involved interaction as Mia explained to me the main idea of the reading. I paraphrased what she told me, and she wrote what I told her. In this case, I did give her the answer, but it was a crafted answer that came from Mia. Thus, I enjoyed helping Mia with her reading assignment because I learned that encouraging the student to explain the answer and then I paraphrasing what he or she said can facilitate learning and increase understanding. 

Division Word Problems and the Whip Dance

When I saw division word problems on Yasmeen’s math workbook, my heart relaxed because I did not have to struggle with complex word problems. I read out the problem, provided some hints, and guided her on the long division process. Sometimes Yasmeen needed extra time to do the calculations, so I would help her by asking specific questions and complimenting her for solving the problems. Whenever she felt that she was doing the calculations correctly, Yasmeen performed the whip dance to me and her friends. That was not surprising because I knew Yasmeen had that natural inclination of entertaining people. Instead, I saw that dance as a positive motivation and followed the whip dance with her. She smiled with joy. Doing the whip dance with Yasmeen felt like the barrier between the college student and elementary student disappeared and that we were in unison.

Having Fun with UNO

I do not remember having so much fun playing UNO cards with an elementary school student before. His name is Sam. His rule made me laugh uncontrollably and enjoy the present activity at the moment. The rule that Sam used was he would take a card from the deck and put that card down if it matched the color or number of the top card in the pile. I thought that was wrong because taking a card from the deck meant that the player had finished his or her turn and the next player would either put a card down or take a card from the deck. However, I did not tell him that he was wrong because I started to doubt my knowledge of the game’s rules. I ended up winning the first round, but we both were confused about how we played after multiple rounds.