Martin-TS#13

My Hispanic tutee and I met. First on the agenda was to review some of the thematic and figurative language topics that had been introduced last session. Again, I had him try to explain in his own words what each of the following were: themes, symbols, figurative language, similes, metaphors, and repetition. I also had him provide examples from either his own mind or from the story. He was still struggling with this (not quite able to both explain and give examples), but wanted to learn them (progress!) so we went back to the story and found examples to help clarify. I explained again when/why such writing mechanisms were used, and then would show how they were doing that in the story. He began to draw parallels to other things in the story (oh-this part is like that part and its working like this in both places). During this discussion, he brought up how the American eagle and flag symbolizes the United States, and seemed very pleased to have drawn a connection from the real world to reading. I encouraged this real-world connection drawing, explaining that writing is just about the real world, and much of what can be read is representative of the real world. Books are not just a waste of time, but something that can help you process and better understand (and evaluate/criticize) the reality we have, are, and might live in. He likes the news and video games, and we got into a discussion about how topics currently being covered (like war) have happened before and have been written about already. Because of this, you can learn a lot from reading and how human nature often repeats itself. We were running short on time again, but his writing sample showed minimal improvement. The next session we planned to write something together.