Teacher Discussion Forums

I am a Primary School teacher in Hong Kong and I'm currently tutoring a six year old child for one hour a night, five nights a week. The child seems to have a problem retaining whatever we're studying and I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions about how to tackle our sessions together. The main aim is to teach this child to read.

At the moment, I am trying to keep it fun for him and incorporating games into the sessions (after all, I see five nights a week as excessive, but hey, this is Hong Kong).

Basically, I start the lesson by playing a game with simple sight words. We then usually read a book from school together and I attempt a writing or word ordering activity. I also have some phonics videos that we watch together. We have been doing this for about 6 weeks and I haven't seen much improvement at all. His reading involves a lot more guesswork than any real reading strategies, and I'm starting to wonder whether any of it is sinking in.

I really want to help this kid catch up with his classmates, so any suggestions for one on one literacy tutoring would be greatly appreciated.

Hi there, I teach a 5-year old to read once a week and it's a real challenge.

I take two approaches, one is phonics - introducing phonic sounds eg. cat, bat, hat, mat, fat, working through the vowels with different consonant combinations, focusing on three-letter words and then moving up with sh, th, ch, oo, ee, ll, gg, ck, etc.

The second approach is a whole-language one, in which I try to get him to see the whole word as a picture instead of needing to sound it out phonetically. This is done through repetition, so common words like the, are, we, do, etc. are good for this.

Using the whole-language approach, I tackle one page of a simple storybook each week. I read the page to him, then we read it together with him following my voice and looking at the words, then I write the words on the board and call them out for him to erase, then I have him trace the page. Here's an example worksheet I made for Town Mouse and Country Mouse. I made it with the ESL Writing Wizard.

Then we finish up with some games like shoot the basket (if he can read the word on the card).

Hope that helps!

I know this might seem obvious. But have you considered exactly what motivation the kid has to read?

Phonics exercises aren't particularly motivating. I'd prefer that you teach the stories and TELL the stories as meaningful events. Many ESL books/story books are DRY and full of meaningless nonsense.

Engage the kid, his emotions, his interests and his own needs. Once you find those, you can press the right buttons.

Kenneth

You wrote that you use a book from school...

Mmm! This could be a big turn off of its own. Chinese kids tend to spend a lot of time looking at their 'school' books. Extra tuition really doesn't help in this regard if you are looking at motivational issues.

Try some of the colorful story books available at a good ESL bookstore in H.K.

Kenneth
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Pleiades Journal of TYLE + My Own English School

Thank you Ken and Nick for your advice,

I have spent the last two weeks using the reading programme from reading a-z (www.readinga-z.com) and it is really doing the trick! His reading has approved greatly in this short period of time, along with his motivation. At first I thought he might have a learning disability, but I went back to very simple texts (Level aa in the a-z readers) and concentrated a lot on simple High Frequency Words, and now he is starting to get some confidence and enjoy reading a lot more. He is even willing to read to his mum when she comes to pick him up now - something I could never get him to do before.

We start with a HFW book, which he gets to take home, colour in and read to his parents (I downloaded and printed all the materials), then a quick phonics lesson, concentrating on a new sound every day. Luckily, the lessons are progressive, so we are constantly reinforcing what we've done previously. Then we read a new book, which he can do by himself. If he's doing well, I allow him to colour it for a few minutes while I organise the next activity. Each book has a simple worksheet. I've also started using the LeapPad electronic reading thingamijig for a couple of minutes at the end of the lesson as a bonus for when his reading/behaviour is good. We still use a book from school (a picture-story book, not a textbook), but we read this one together and without any pressure to get all the words right.

I am quite lucky that this boy's mum has offered to pay for the cost of printing all of these booklets and worksheets (as I don't have a computer at home and need to get them printed elsewhere). However, if you have access to a printer, the a-z programme seems to be very useful. It's a real joy to see the young fella confident enough to start reading by himself.