Sunday, February 5, 2012

New experiences at the PLC 2/1

I visited the PLC for my second tutoring session with Tangela this semester on Wednesday February 1st. It was sad when I first walked in because she told me that she had sprained her ankle over the weekend! She said she was not in much pain, just a little uncomfortable. When I sat down she said she was working on some EOCT practice for her Economics class. Her teacher had set up a sort of flashcard review online. It was a mixture of asking a question or listing a term and then Tangela would try to answer it aloud to me and then we would click to see the answer. We worked on this for the duration of our time together. I thought that the practice Mr. Piazza developed for the students was great. Tangela thought that it was very helpful to have it in a sort of flashcard form. She knew about half of the terms. When she did not know a term, I would help her break the question down word by word. I would try to define the words or explain things that I thought she may understand better. Sometimes, she was then able to understand the question. If she did not know the answer then I would have her repeat the question and answer to me two times each to sort of solidify it in her head. I asked her before I left if she thought she learned some new definitions and if she thought the program was good and she said yes that she wanted to do it again the next week! An exciting thing for me about being in the PLC from 12:45-1:45 is that I am in the classroom for advisement. At first, I was a little upset because I thought it would not be beneficial for me to sit in on the class's advisement, but I was wrong! It was really interesting to observe the lesson on brainstorming. The class played a little game that involved brainstorming and they all talked together about the benefits of brainstorming ideas in many facets of life. Almost all of the class participated in the discussion which was great! Mr. Piazza seems like a great teacher and a really nice guy. He is great with the kids and I think that it was such a blessing to be in his class. He is very patient and understanding which is sometimes hard to be with the students. I love seeing him interact with the students and will continue to learn from him. Overall, I think that this was a great day at the PLC and I look forward to tutoring next week at my happy place! :)