Introduction
Tutoring Rica gave me some first hand experience in working with an English Language Learner (ELL). Through this experience, I realized the importance of Rica’s background. The challenges that many teachers face surfaced quickly, and were difficult to manage. In visiting the ELL teacher’s room with Rica, I was able to view the kind of interaction that Rica was accustomed to, which led me into one successful and one not so successful tutoring session. As my time with Rica was quickly coming to an end, I was overwhelmed by all the things that I would have done.
Who’s Rica?
Rica is a third grader who recently immigrated to the US with her family from the Philippines. She lives with her extended family including two grandparents, her mother, her father, and two siblings who are both younger than she is. Her native language is Tagolog, in which she is literate. Her parents can speak some English, but at home, Tagolog is spoken most often and exclusively with her grandparents. She has a few family obligations including washing dishes with her mother. The most difficult thing about learning English for her is understanding her teachers. She admits that she doesn’t always understand what teachers and other people are saying to her, which became evident when I asked her if she had an ELL teacher. Her answer was no, which I later discovered wasn’t the case.
To better understand Rica’s background, I spoke with the ELL teacher and her cousin. It turns out that Rica’s father moved here about a year before the rest of her family. He stayed with his extended family that was already here and recently returned to the Philippines to bring his wife and children to the US. So, when Rica arrived here, a support network greeted her, including children her own age that she can interact with.
In working Rica, I learned that laughing is a key to her understanding, and provides real insight to what she understands. When she doesn’t understand, she looks very serious. When she gets it, her face melts into various expressions that reflect the content including much laughter. Acting goofy, joking, and hassling each other in fun help break the seriousness and tension that surround learning English for her. Using humor and lots of laughing seemed to motivate Rica. Her phonemic understanding, a result of literacy in Tagolog, helps ease reading in English and motivates her as well. Being able to say words out loud from print makes Rica feel like a third grader, even f her comprehension is behind. Literacy comes slowly, and with Rica’s incredible work ethic, it wont be long until she makes more meaning from print.
General Challenges
During my time with Rica, I found three things to be particularly challenging. The first was the context of the tutoring. The classroom teacher that I was working with preferred that we work in the hall on reading instead of in the classroom where the rest of the class was working on reading. This presented major problems. I had no chalkboard or white board, and no props. It was noisy, distracting, and uncomfortable. If I had my own classroom, or at least a classroom that had resources in it that I could use, reading with Rica would have been easier.
The second challenge actually highlights one of Rica’s strengths, a double edge sword. Rica’s decoding skills were phenomenal. When she read aloud, each word from any grade level text was pronounced phonemically correct. Her reading was fluent and understandable. In her mind, she was reading. Well, reading is making meaning from text, which Rica was not. And, since at Marcy Open students choose their own books to read, this presented a major challenge. Rica wanted to read books that looked like the other kids’ books, and that’s what she did. So, she’d read aloud, sound great, and comprehend near nearly nothing. Rica should have been reading text that were better suited to increasing vocabulary and at a level where she could have comprehended them. I wish I could have been around more to guide Rica in her book selecting process.
The third challenge was the difference between Rica’s experience and the experience depicted in most high quality literature that Rica chose to read. For example, during one of our sessions, Rica decided to read The Polar Express. Just to start, I explained polar bears, snow, trains, and Christmas. That was just the beginning. Considering the fantasy factor, my concrete attempt at explaining trains didn’t hold up very well. When we were finished, and after much explanation on each page, I wanted to see what meaning she had made. Using some questioning techniques, I tried to test her comprehension. I asked her to tell me about the picture on the cover of the book. I was hoping she would point to some of the things shown in the pictures and assign labels, at least. She couldn’t do it, even after all the vocabulary we went over previous to reading the story.
After a few hours of reading with Rica, I felt discouraged and frustrated. I decided to spend some time with her and her ELL teacher.
Some Insight
My visit to the ELL room with Rica offered the hope I needed. Watching the ELL teacher use the some of the strategies that we talked about in class and that were highlighted in the reading helped me put theory into practice (it turns out that I needed some scaffolding myself). According to Cummin’s Quadrant, Rica’s teacher used context embedded reading material that was between demanding and undemanding cognitively. They read Arturo’s Baton for the second time. It occurred to me then that like students that are emergent readers in English, repeated reading serves a purpose. Why I didn’t use that technique with Rica earlier, I don’t know, but I would now.
To begin, the teacher then went over important vocabulary with the group of five using scaffolding until the group came up with definitions for key words. For example, she asked, “What’s a baton?” When there was no answer, she gave a movement with her hands like a conductor. The group blurted out in broken English words like stick, waves, a band, and orchestra. She continued, explaining other unfamiliar words like orchestra, conductor, and musicians. She asked simple questions that gave the students a chance to recall the vocabulary words before reading, as well. For example, a few minutes after explaining the word musicians, she asked who played in an orchestra. The students answered in unison correctly.
Moving on, the group read the book together in unison. The teachers voice was the most clear, but all the students could be heard. After each page, the teacher stopped and talked about the text using the illustrations to guide her questioning. Below are some of the questions she asked.
When he waved wildly, what did he do?
What do we call these people?
What’s swarmed mean?
Where is this taking place?
What’s a world tour?
Where is Arturo now?
Who’s this and what do they do?
During the exploration of the book, students used some Somali as well as English. The ELL teacher didn’t discourage this, but instead was interested. One example of this, which I found particularly interesting, was in relation to the word Tuscunini. In Somali, the word cunini means pills. The students found this relationship amusing. The ELL teacher said, “Oh…I have a headache, I need a cunini!” There was a pause, and then a burst of laughter from the students, including Rica. She validated and used a language other than English. I knew, had I more time with Rica, learning word in her language would increase our communication.
I realized that tutoring Rica was going to be a two way exchange of knowledge and my biggest mistake so far was tying to get her to understand me instead of trying to get us to understanding each other. I think this experience with the ELL teacher and Rica improved my effectiveness in tutoring Rica more than anything else.
Two telling tutoring moments: One success
With more new ideas from the readings and watching the ELL teacher, I was sure I would do better in communicating with Rica during our next reading session. Rica brought It’s a Hummingbird’s Life with her and we settled on the carpet in the hall. Hummingbirds, I thought, this might be a difficult one, but she insisted. Before we began, I briefly looked through the book with Rica and tried to provide a few sentence summary for her like Jeff did for each chapter of Stone Fox for his ELL students. We continued and she read the text aloud, phonemically perfect. Each page touched on a different characteristic of hummingbirds, and each page was riddled with unfamiliar language including ping-pong, poodle, fur, camouflage, saliva, stamping, swooping, diving, aerial display, mate, downy, bill, beak, plunge, groom, sunbathe, and on and on and on. Even with the pictures provided (they helped a lot), and my explanations before and during the reading, it was extremely difficult. When we were finished, Rica’s summary was that there are many kinds of hummingbirds and they fly fast. I was disappointed. I had hoped for so much more. There was so much information! But, she comprehended something, and that’s better than nothing, right? By the look on her face, I could tell she wasn’t that impressed either. I was frustrated still, but feeling more effective than before because the book was extremely difficult. Any third grader would have had some difficulty with it. I imagine she felt more frustrated than me, though.
During one session, I tutored Rica in math, my specialty area. If I can explain anything in 3 or more ways, it’s math. I had high hopes. The activity was balancing a checkbook followed by some word problems that required grade level reading skills and a high level of comprehension. Just like during our reading sessions, I explained the necessary vocabulary. We started, and the vocabulary was repetitive because balancing a checkbook is repetitive. The math terms were familiar, and together, we put addition signs next to the word deposit and interest, and minus signs next to the word withdraw. As we moved through the activity, whenever we would add, together we said deposit or interest. Whenever we would subtract, we would say withdraw. So, when we got to the word problems, Rica was familiar with the terms, and I released responsibility to her slowly. As we read the story together, she put a minus by the word withdraw and a plus by the word deposit without my scaffolding. She transferred the skill! I was practically jumping for joy. She had acquired a method and I was part of it! Once we were finished, she sighed and said, “There we go…I’m done.” I was shocked. She said it more naturally than I had ever heard her say anything. She had this satisfied look on her face, one of accomplishment. I knew I was part of it, and couldn’t help but feel proud. She should, too. I just touched her back and said, “Well, what do you want to do for choice time?” something that she rarely had a chance to squeeze in because she was always working until the last minute to finish her assignments. She just looked happy, and I knew that this success would motivate her. I won’t ever forget it.
Had I more time…
I feel like I didn’t have enough time with Rica. The breakthrough I felt during our math session gave me so much motivation (and her too hopefully) that I wish I could be with her for the rest of the year. One thing I didn’t have a chance to do that I really wanted to was work on her writing with her. I did have a chance to look at her journal and make copies, though. I noticed a few patterns. If she can copy from the board, she will. Some things are obviously copied, reflecting perfect grammar, spelling, and punctuation, a feat for any third grader. When writing independently, sentences are short and surface. Ideas aren’t explored or expanded and usually thoughts appear in sentence fragments and are disjointed. Tenses rarely match. To and for are used interchangeably. If I had the time, I’d love to work with her expanding her ideas and showing her how her thoughts can be organized on paper and how her correct use of tenses in oral speech look on paper.