My next session I was back tutoring Matthew after an intermission
of more than two weeks. At this point I felt that free-writes were the best way
to start things off. The day’s prompt was simply: Tell me about some things
that make you happy. In five minutes he wrote a couple of nice paragraphs about
football and working together as a team. I brought a book titled Pegasus and asked him some questions
about chimaeras and Greek mythology. Earlier he told me that he had read Harry
Potter and I asked him what chimaeras were in those books (hippogriffs,
centaurs, and unicorns to name a few). Then we took turns reading pages, and I
was happy that the book was both interesting to him and level appropriate. Occasionally
I would ask him open-ended questions about character motivations and what he
thought would happen next. When new vocabulary came up, I would explain what
the words meant. I wanted him to enjoy the reading but also to read the text
critically and think about the intended message of the author and the myth. I
asked him some follow-up questions about the story and had him write down his
answers.
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