Second Tutoring Session

In my second tutoring session I had two students again. They both did not start their paper, so I asked them if they had picked a topic yet. They both did not so that was the first thing that we worked on. We all talked together about the assignment and brainstormed some ideas for a topic.

One student was very quick and picked a topic shortly after. the other needed more time to think so I decided this would be a great opportunity for him to take a few minutes to just jot down some topics while I work with the other student. The next higher order concern that we worked on was creating a thesis. After picking a topic I thought this would be an excellent way of starting the paper so that we could see what direction to go in with the rest of the paper. I basically asked him what he wanted the reader to take from his piece of work after reading it. This would help him stay on track with what he was going to write. We came up with a few different variations of a thesis. While he chose what the best one might be, I returned to the other student. He had a good list of ideas ,but because his second language was English it was hard for him to say exactly what he wanted without second guessing himself. I knew I had to be patient and understanding. We continued to talk until he got out his ideas in the way that he wanted. After that we also worked on a thesis and he was very happy when we he got both things down and was able to express his ideas. As the session carried on I continued the back and forth between students giving them small task to do while I worked with one individually. The collaborative tutoring style worked very effectively.

The session was a success and both students had a lot of information and ideas to work with and they thanked me for my help. The only problem I faced was the fact that one student didn't speak English to well which at times required a lot of individual attention. This caused the other student to wait a bit longer for me to turn my attention back so I felt like he got distracted a couple times. I learned that working with two students is always a challenge and even more so when one of  the students is not a native English speaker.