Tutoring with a 5th Grader

 Ashley Rubin

          For this volunteer work, I helped assist with in-home tutoring. I’ve done something like this before when I was in high school and landed myself back in it again. I could sit down with a young girl in fifth grade who needed to prepare for her state test. Being that I’m familiar with how the test used to be back then, I felt as though a little of my knowledge would help. She expressed she was fantastic at mathematics, but struggled with English Language Arts. With ELA, she needed help with both multiple choice and how to properly write a short response using the right details and quotes from a text.

            In the process of helping this young girl, I felt as though I could provide her with the help that she needed. We looked at her old English state test to see where she made her mistakes and how she can improve on it. I asked her questions like how hard it is when coming to English, comprehending what you’re reading or how to find details within a text. She expressed it was both comprehending and finding details within a text to support your response. I then searched up past ELA state tests to work on with her. We took our time reading a text. I then insisted on her underlining any terms that were difficult and to make notes on what she understood from her reading. We then looked at the multiple choice to see what they were asking and then dived right back into rereading the text over a second time.

           The passage we were reading was called, “What Is Lake-Effect Snow?” taking place upstate Buffalo, New York and how the weather is affecting neighbors in that town, etc. There was also a visual image that you can see relating to the passage. We looked at one of the multiple-choice questions that asked, “What does “brewing” mean as it is used in paragraph 1?”. I asked her if she knew what the word brewing means or ever heard of the term and she said no. We underlined the word brewing and went straight to read over paragraph one because that's what was stated to do. I gave her a little gem to use when a multiple choice question is asking you about a specific term. One of my good teachers once told me that you can insert the multiple choice answer and replace it with the term asked to see if the sentence makes sense and if it does, that's your answer. One answer choice was “being studied ''. We fit that into the sentence: It was the early morning hours in Buffalo, New York. Trouble was brewing. And it made little sense. So then we chose the other choice, which was “developing” and said it along with the sentence and it made complete sense as we continued reading the line that went along with the passage.

          She continued using my gem, and I trusted her to continue answering the other multiple-choice questions. As I was observing, she underlined the term and went to the paragraph in which they instructed in the question. She read it and inserted the word to see if it made sense and picked up on it quickly. I then express that most questions would ask about a term, but it's good to read and really grasp the concept of what the passage is about and to create an image in her head on it. My time was counting down as I enjoyed helping her and wasn't able to show her how to do her short responses, but hopefully with what I told her with the multiple choice, she can navigate it with the response but just in a written format.

           I felt a connection with my younger side when I was in her exact position and that I could use my knowledge from what I know now to help her. So that felt great, and I was happy enough that her mother trusted me to do so. I've been tutoring since high school so I just learned to be patient with others and to help others no matter the age is a good thing and I will do it so long as it helps the next person progress in their future life. Only challenge that was faced was her knowing a term beforehand without context clues, but she then got rid of her frustration and coped with the work. Before I left, I told her I hope she does well on her exam and to remain focused on what the question was asking for. Also, to stray away from her own opinion, etc. That she got this and to let me know when she's done, how well she did. However, a picture couldn't be distributed because of the mother wanting privacy within her home.

           With the connection to my globalization class, it shows how interconnected and interdependent many people in the world who live and work on a large planet can be. We all have many trades, talents, struggles, etc. that we either have expertise in or deal with. Overall, we take it one step at a time to overcome that barrier. Chapter 1 states, “Worldwide digitization has been greatly accelerated by the coronavirus-induced explosion of work and communication online.” So with the use of the internet and the world being digital, we are open to many ways to learn and explore our browser. Another quote from Chapter 5, “Cultural globalization refers to the intensification and expansion of cultural flows across the globe.” We know that culture is a broad topic and, with the expansion of learning, it enhances a sense of goodness within the world.

References

Steger, M.B (2023). Globalization: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press.