ACTIVITY BANK

Below are some suggested activities for you and your student.  If you have successful lesson plans you would like to share with the RT Volunteer community, please contact our office and we'd be happy to post them.

Library Time
Level: All
Suggested by: RT Volunteer Lena Buell

Last week, I found this excellent interview with a childrens' book author on "Raising Bookworms". The interview jumped out at me because this is just what I've been trying to work on with the boy I tutor -- getting him to want to read. He's about to enter 3rd grade, and loves math (he wants to be an engineer), but remains unconvinced that reading, writing and spelling are also fun and/or important. So, reading, writing and spelling are just what I've been asking him to do every week.

So far, I've actually had pretty good progress on the writing and spelling side. We've even gotten into a story-writing routine: each week, we pick a topic and he writes about it. Anything he wants - including Lego and computer games - and I help him a little with brainstorming before he starts writing. He'll often throw in words I would never have expected, and he guess-spells them fairly well ("poasinis" for "poisonous" in a story about snakes, for example). The main stumbling block has been in reading. He will read, and does read, but, interestingly, not usually for content. Most of the time he's just reading the letters/words without absorbing the meaning - and if there's a word he doesn't know, he just skips over it, unconcerned. I've been working on this with him by reading stories outloud, and making him stop, sound out and learn the meaning of each word he doesn't know. Even so, reading is still a chore for him-- probably because he's not connecting the physical task of reading with the emotional and mental rewards from understanding and absorbing the story or information. This is where the article came in: how can I get him to love reading? To gobble up every book in sight, like I did when I was a kid? In the interview, the author mentions the importance of recognizing each individual child's passions and interests when encouraging reading.

My brilliant idea: a field trip to the local library! Conveniently, there is a branch located a few blocks from my tutee's house, so we walked over last Tuesday. While I had hoped he'd jump at the chance to pick out any book he wanted, he mostly wandered around the library looking at comic books and rejecting my suggestions of chapter books and picture books I thought he might like. Not to be deterred, I eventually got him to agree to three story- and chapter-books. One, a book of scary stories, was a little advanced for his age, so I decided to read it to him instead of asking him to read to me. I'm hoping this tactic will get him more excited about reading, as he might feel like it's less of a chore and more of a new form of entertainment. I'm also considering suggesting his mother read to him, as the author in the interview argues this is positive reinforcement even for kids in middle school.

I plan to take my tutee back to the library on a regular basis. I'm convinced I'll get him to love books one of these days!

Teaching Prepositions
Level: Pre-Literacy/Low Beginner

Total Physical Response is a great way to teach new prepositions. All you need is a box, and four or five other objects. Once you have taught your student the names of all of the objects you are using, and the command "Put", you can teach prepositions. For example, "Put the candy in the box. Put the flower next to the box. Put the book between the box and the flower." The variations on this theme are endless-you can use new objects to review the prepositions in later lessons, and build up to asking more complex questions like "Where is the candy?"

Cooking and Recipes
Level: All

Cooking is a subject close to the heart of many of our students, and so, it provides an opportunity to talk about things your student already knows a great deal about. You can use a recipe to teach measurements, food names, and cooking directions. Make it a TPR lesson, where you read out loud the directions, and your student follows each step in the recipe with the required action. Or, turn it into a Language Experience Approach lesson, where your student tells you about something she likes to make, and you ask her to describe each step in making this dish, and transcribe the steps involved, and turn it into an English language recipe.

Writing a Journal
Level: High Beginner and above

Have your student keep a daily or weekly journal about her experiences adjusting to life in San Francisco. For higher level students, suggest that they keep track of any questions that come up during the week, whether the question is about English grammar, a new word, or a puzzling aspect of American culture. This journal can then become the basis for lessons, and allows you to be tremendously responsive to your student's needs. The journal itself can also be used to help develop your student's writing skills; read through it and write something back to your student, that she can respond to in the next lesson. Make a note of any common mistakes your student makes in her writing.

Shopping List
Level: Beginner

Using a supermarket flyer or store catalogue, help your student make a shopping list of items she'd like to or needs to buy. Ask her questions about the flyer. "How much is the chicken? How many sodas can you buy for $1.00?" Have her point to the right words if she is a very low beginner, and build up to other activities later.

Matching Game
Level: All

This is a good way to assess your student's understanding of new vocabulary. Design a "matching" game, where your student matches the words in one column to the words in the opposite column. You can have her match words that are opposites, words that are in the same category (for example, she could match place names with the people who work there such as post office/mailman), words that are the same part of speech, whatever you decide your student needs to practice.

Concentration
Level: Pre-Literacy to Low Beginner

For students with limited literacy skills, concentration can be a fun way to test sight recognition of words. Work with eight or nine words you have already taught. For each word card, there should be a picture card as well. Place all the cards face down. Then, have her match the words to the pictures.