Riverview Mentoring Update-4.28.10

Wednesday, April 28

Today was my first day back to tutoring Sam. Last week we had April vacation, and although I was trying to go during the vacation, I ended up having to work, and so could not. The previous week, neither Sam, nor Phil came to tutoring because they were preparing for a school dance.

I'm really impressed with Sam. During the two weeks he managed to finish the last three math problems in Lesson 1 and do eight problems in Lesson 2. Last week, Mrs. McDowell checked his work, and helped him work on the ones he had trouble with.

This week, we decided to split our time between math and sentence structure/vocab. For the first half an hour, we worked on math. Sam was going through most of the problems with ease. If we came to a concept he didn't really understand, I was able to break it down into smaller pieces, and he made the connections himself. It was really exciting to see the way he was learning, and piecing everything together. We actually got to three questions that I wasn't sure how to do. Mrs. McDowell came over and was able to help us solve one of them, because I was unsure which method the question was asking for. For the other two question, dealing with patterns, neither myself, nor Mrs. McDowell, nor Sam was able to figure them out, and Mrs. McDowell couldn't find her answer key. I saw that Sam was getting frustrated, so I suggested that we move onto looking at the next problem. After we looked at it, and explained the concepts it included, we decided that same would do that problem, as well as the next problem for homework to finish up Lesson 2. Then he would do the first problem of Lesson 3, and if he had time, after all his other homework he would try problems 2-5 in Lesson 3.

After we finished with math, we moved onto Sentence structure/vocab. We looked in my old SAT prep book to see examples. We ended up looking at filling in the blanks part. We talked about looking for keywords such as "although," "hoping," and "before," or describing words. Those key words would help us determine the kind of word we wanted to use. If the sentence had two blanks, we used the keywords to figure out if the words we were looking for were positive or negative, to help us with the process of elimination. For the sentences with one blank we looked at the keywords, and Sam was able to make connections on his own, between the keyword and the meaning of one of the options, to get the right answer. For homework, I assigned him just two sentence structure sentences because I saw that he better understands how to do this and needs to focus more on math.

Over the past 5 weeks, I have already seen tremendous improvement in Sam. I am confident that if he stays with this rate of learning, he will do very well on his SAT tests this summer. I found throughout this activity that I was able to adapt my teaching/tutoring style to best fir Sam's needs. Although it took some struggle and figuring out exactly what he needed from me, I think that I was successfully able to help him, and teach him some tricks that will help him do better and be better prepared for his test. I will continue to tutor him in the weeks leading up to the end of school, but as we seem to have reached the main goals, I conclude this activity as successfully completed.

STAGE Update-4.8.10

Thursday, April 8

I got to STAGE today at about 4:30, just in time to start Act Two. It went really smoothly, and there were no problems with the sound effects. I think the cast did really well today; everyone knew almost all their lines, which made working on blocking and working the pace much easier. Now we can focus on volume and articluartion of the cast and how the sound and lighting will tie the play together. We settled almost completely on the playlist; we just need to find a yiddish wedding song. I gave Mrs. B the CD before rehearsal so they could use it until I got back, from softball, but apparently two songs don't work. I will have to burn her a new CD for Tuesday. i will also try to find the Yiddish wedding some, but I really like our sound effects. They really add humor and dramatic effects to the dialogue. I can't wait until we can do full run-throughs with the sound and the whole play. I think it will be well received by the audience, and it will be very enjoyable for everyone involved.

Riverview Mentoring Update-4.7.10

Wednesday, April 7

I got to Riverview on time today, skipping softball practice completely, after letting Coach know at yesterday's game. When I got to Riverview, Mrs. McDowell let me know that the boys were actually able to install the SAT/PSAT practice software onto their computers, so that was good to know. Hopefully they will use it during the week when Liz and I aren't there, so that we can review, to help the information stick in their minds.

Sam and I worked mostly on math today, as he and his mom reviewed some vocab over his vacation. The math we went over, I thought was pretty basic, but I saw how difficult it was for Sam to comprehend a bunch of concepts. It was really eye-opening for me to see how differently Sam thought about math. He explained to me that he didn't know the terms I was using, so I found out that explaining the terms, and repeating those over at various points in the review/lesson was the most helpful for him. I also found that breaking down complex concepts into simpler concepts was helpful to Sam; he was able to piece together a concept like squaring and square roots, by thinking about the multiplication times table and the doubling of numbers.

We were working through a math packet, so Mrs. McDowell assigned Sam to do one lesson over the week. It's about 15 problems, and Sam seemed less than excited, but I don't blame him, because of course it's not fun to do work that you struggle with. I only hope that he does it so that I can help him review and go over concepts he didn't understand, next week.

Although we focused on math for most of the time, Sam and I did work on vocab a bit, which is another part he doesn't really like. I found out that the methods I had used with Phil didn't really help Sam; he told me that it was easier for him to look at the list of words on the worksheet Mrs. McDowell gave him, and pick out the words he already knew and heard most often. Then we talked about what those words meant and what factor they had in common. We discovered that "demolish," "destroy," and "department" all have a common factor of the pieces. Therefore we concluded that the prefix "de-" means to go away from, or break down. Sam is going to review his list od "de-" words and also "re-" words like "review," because those will be the easiest for him.

We'll review what we went over this week, what he does over the week, and hopefully look at some new concepts next week.

Swimming Update-April 7, 2010

Wednesday, April 7

Unfortunately, I missed the mini meet. I didn't get back to Falmouth until almost 7pm. I'm really sad that I missed the mini meet. I was really hoping to improve my times, and work on my starts a bit more, but I think that I achieved my goals with this activity. I was able to improve the times between my two mini-meets, getting faster, and especially for backstoke, I was faster than some of the other swimmers by about 5 seconds. This fufills my goal of becoming stronger and faster, even though I think I could continue to improve with more practice. I've found that through this activity, my teaching skils have improved, as I can now teach the skills I've learned and I use the most to my own swimmers, in order to help teach them the proper techiniques and to help them also get faster and stronger. I even lost some weight during this activity, a fufillment for another of my goals.

Hopefully, I will be able to contine swimming, but I know that with the time change between 6:00 and 7:00 swim team, I will not be able to do it regularly, and that will make it hard to track my progress and goals. Therefore I conclude this activity.

STAGE Update-4.6.10

Tuesday, April 6

I missed STAGE today, as I went with the Softball team to the game at Nantucket. I was unable to burn the CD as my computer was having issues with CD's formatting, so I will have that for her either tomorrow or Thursday. On the bright side, I dropped off some props, like fake flowers, so that rehearsal can become more realistic. I know that the stage manager is able to get sound effects nad has most of the music for the play, so I think that my missing rehearsal wasn't too big of a deal. As we get closer to the opening of FOOLS, I will focus more on STAGE, and being very avaible to provide music and sound effects.

Swimming Update-April 5, 2010

Monday, April 5

As I feared, I was unable to get back to Falmouth in time to go to 6:00 swim team. In order to be prepared for the mini meet on Wednesday, I decided to try and strengthen my legs by going on our home elliptical for about an hour and a half. I've used the elliptical before, and I know that it mostly works my calves and thighs, which will hopefully make my kicking even stronger for Wednesday, and hopefully make me faster. I put the elliptical on the highest resistance level, 12, and tried to keep a constant average speed of about 38 rotations per minute (rpm). After my work out, I did feel a tired, but my legs felt stretched and stronger, so hopefully I will be somewhat ready for the mini meet on Wednesday.

I also am worried about even maing it to the mini meet, because it starts at 5:15, instead of 6, and I have my Riverview mentoring on Wednesday, which goes until 4:45. It is very difficult to get back to Falmouth from Sandwich in less than half an hour, neglecting any traffic. I will try to make it back in time for the mini meet. If I can't make it back, then I think I will consider ending this activity early.

STAGE Update-4.1.10

Thursday, April 1

We had to end STAGE early today, because of fire drills in the school. There have been issues with the alarm, and we had to leave the school around 4:45 today. I wasn't there for much of rehearsal, as I was at softball practice, but we did get to work a bit on using the sound effects in rehearsal. I talked to Mrs. Botsford, and I will burn a CD of most, if not all, of the music and sound effects we use, so that if I can't be there, they can still rehearse with sound. I should have that ready for her sometime next week.