Regarding the journals about my experience as a tutor, among the three sessions, fifth graders learn independently, quietly, and quickly. Almost all the students in this class worked hard with great participation and fully focused their attentions on the tasks. They had strong abilities to learn new knowledge and skills. Overall, the …show more content…
Within the eight weeks of tutoring, some of them had questions about the computer programming and class instructions; however, no students asked me for help with their study. Fifth graders were asked to read a lot in a variety of subject areas, analyze characters, plot, and settings, and do lots of writing practice. Thus, their language and literacy were enhanced quickly. For the second graders, they were struggling with reading skills. In some cases, they did not understand what the questions meant, and thus, asked for the answers directly. In a math class, their teacher read the questions for them; however, they still had difficulty fully understanding the question because they could understand the words on the papers. I would repeat the questions for those who did not listen to the questions clearly. For those who asked the answers, I applied the CIM to help them figure out the answers. After finishing the task, they could read some books, which could increase their literacy. In the kindergarten session, every activity required a tutor to participate because the kids were too young to finish a task independently. Most of their tasks were to recognize numbers. However, some of them were struggling with the memory; they easily forgot the numbers they just learned couple minutes ago. I applied the CIM to help them learn the numbers and reinforce their memory. To some extent, their …show more content…
Still few students just asked for the answers and would not like to learn how these problems were solved. For me, the CIM is an effective instructional method to improve students’ reading skills because it can keep students focused, increase their confidence, stimulate their learning interest, and boost their learning efficiency through keeping asking them explicit at a rapid speed and concise questions and giving praise for their correct answers. More specifically, in the kindergarten session, I was assigned to a group of four to teach kids to identify number 1-10. At the beginning, I applied the traditional teaching method, reading these numbers for them and asking them to repeat and write down. A few minutes later, two of them forgot what they had learned and were not interested in learning again. Then, I changed to use the CIM. The rapid speed, the high rate of responses, corrective feedback, and frequent praises made them focused and aroused their learning interest, and thus, enhance their learning