Below is an excerpt from a letter I wrote addressed to the Special Education teacher, the parent and end-of-the-year IEP team players invested in the student’s academic success.
“Based on (student’s) Standard Scores, the area of concern is Visual Perceptual-Motor Test Scores. How this translates to my work as home math tutor is interesting to me.....(Student) struggles with multiplication facts recall and computational procedures. As far as I can see the student does not keep resources available (when doing homework) like a multiplication sheet or a calculator etc. to help her when she gets stuck. (Student) also struggles with procedures in multiplying and dividing fractions. When I first started working with ..... I found she didn’t out-picture the narrative elements in the word problem. As a result sometimes she was not able to hold the information in mind and then determine what to do with the information. Too often .... did not accurately read the last sentence of the word problem which signals what action she must take to solve the problem. Once we started drawing a story-line narrative of the word problem, .. became connected, engaged in the people, the things, the location and the action or events that were happening in the word problem. Finally she began to differentiate the story line from the actual question that ultimately required her to set up numerical expression. Since (student) reads well and loves narrative, when I asked her to create a full story-picture with action (out picturing) she could solve the problem. Somehow the emotional filter dropped and mathematical cognitive processing became available to her."
Seasoned Whole Child Approach to Tutoring Your Child
and Supporting Your Family
I teach/tutor within the experience of relationship with the multilayered, whole child/student. I call upon the awakened Self both in myself and the student’s sense of self. In my experience it is in this open flexible psyche/mind that true learning happens.
I begin each session with observation coupled with evaluation. When needed I recalibrate and adjust my thinking as to where we are and where we are going for the one to two hour session. We set goals and “next step” priorities based on the student’s executive skills and subject/discipline we are undertaking for the session. We then settle into a shared inquiry. Recalibration may be needed. Recognizing the homework load relative to the student’s comprehension level we may outline an allotment of time necessary for each subject area or concept for that academic lesson.
At that point the student reprioritizes and again we settle into shared exchange of mental processing. In this way we connect. Truly learning on both sides of the tutor student relationship occurs here.Below is an excerpt from a letter I wrote addressed to the Special Education teacher, the parent and end-of-the-year IEP team players invested in the student’s academic success.