Reading with LiLi

Goals:  Through volunteering at the Greensboro Montessori School and helping Lili improve her reading skills, I really hope I can leave a positive impact in her life and teach her skills that she will use for the rest of her school and outside life. Since I have never been a tutor before, I also want to learn more about myself as a teacher others. Although I have had some coaching experience at the Greensboro Sportsplex, I think that there are some elements in teaching someone a sport that are different than helping a student learn something so important as reading. Therefore, I hope to learn more about my style of teaching and where I need to improve to help Lili understand better. Since Lili is young, I would also like to learn more about ways to keep her interested and motivated so that she does not get bored and lose her focus and make our sessions something she wants to look foreward to so that she can be enthusiastic about reading all the time.


    LiLi is a student at The Greensboro Montessori School who I read with twice a week. She is Vietnamese and is incredibly smart for her age; I am constantly amazed at her level of conversation and the way she handles herself when we discuss the books we read.

3/27/14 and 4/1/14
    These were my first two days working with LiLi. I was a bit nervous the first time because I was afraid she would get bored or would not want to read with me, but within minutes of meeting her, she was so enthusiastic about reading. I started off reading to her and she read a bit to me and she stayed very focused throughout most of the session. However, I noticed she did not like reading the books herself and was hesitant when I asked her to read to me, so my next goal is to help her become more comfortable and confident in her reading skills because she is a very smart girl and I want her to see what she is capable of doing.

4/8/14 and 4/10/14
       The past two sessions with LiLi have been so much fun. I felt a lot more comfortable and confident in helping her read and can see that she is starting to like reading more. She is still shy about reading out loud, which is why I read to her for most of the time. I would like to have her start reading out loud so she can hear her own voice while she reads, however, I do not want to push her so hard that she begins to feel uncomfortable reading out loud. Sometimes, I will read a page and then while reading, I stop to ask her to read one word off the page which she does. I wanted to start this way so that she does not have to feel nervous about reading out loud. Hopefully by the end of our sessions, LiLi will be able to feel more comfortable reading bigger sections out loud.

4/15/14 and 4/22/14
    I can definitely tell that LiLi is starting to become more comfortable reading with me. Whenever I ask her to read a sentence, she will hesitate at first, and then do it. I tried to make these sessions more fun by reading I Spy books with her. Since each page had a list of things to search for in the picture, LiLi and I alternate reading the lists on each page, searching for the items on the list along the way. I still would like her to read a whole page out loud to me, so at the end of our sessions when I can tell she is ready to go out and play, I ask her to read a couple of sentences from a book before leaving, and she always complies. My next goal is to have her read big sections out loud during our sessions, not just at the end.

4/24/14
     Today was my last session with LiLi and it was so much fun seeing how much she opened up to reading. Although she was still hesitant about reading big sections from books out loud, whenever she did read out loud, she read with more confidence than our first sessions. I loved working with such a sweet and bright student like LiLi, and I cannot wait to see her future accomplishments.


Learning Objective: Considered ethical implications of actions
   Reading is such an important skill and I love that I got to read with LiLi so that she can feel more comfortable with it. As education increases, children can often become left behind because they feel uncomfortable with reading or writing, so it is important to help them understand early on that they should not feel like they need to compete with anyone else and that everyone learns at their own pace. LiLi is a remarkable girl who already shows so much potential as her mind was constantly engaged in reading science books. I hope that our sessions taught her to be confident in her reading aloud skills, something that she was previously shy about, and showed her that she is a great student and a joy to have around.