My First Tutoring Observation!

My first tutoring observation was quite interesting. It was a lot of fun and I actually think it was an effective session. The tutee came in with nothing; no outline, no draft, no thesis, nothing. Just a few main ideas (from the passage) highlighted and a sentence that she thought could possibly be the thesis. What she did have though was a little paragraph that she wrote describing what she needed help with, which was creating a body paragraph. She was able to form a strong opening paragraph, but had trouble when it came down to "fleshing out" the rest of her paper. I read the prompt and noticed that she had a number of sentences highlighted that seemed to be main ideas of the essay. I told her that she could use each of those ideas to create new paragraphs, which would be a great start in forming the body of her paper. Next, I decided that she needed to find the thesis of the prompt in order to create her own thesis, and she would be able to use those main ideas for support.

Once we found the thesis of the prompt, it was time for her to create her own thesis, which she struggled with. She tried restating the prompt's thesis in her own words, but ended up pretty much repeating what was written. Instead, I asked her to summarize the entire prompt in one sentence. That sentence that she created then became her thesis. I asked her if she agreed or disagreed with the thesis and from there, I asked her to use that information that she just wrote in order to form her opening paragraph.  

I let her know that the most important part of forming body paragraphs is that there has to be a connection between each paragraph in order to maintain a steady flow. I let her know the importance of transition sentences, in which the concluding sentence of each paragraph should lead to the opening of a new idea and paragraph. I had her create two paragraphs (one for each main idea that she highlighted in the prompt. However, I didn't let her finish one paragraph before hopping to the next, specifically for the purpose of her learning how to create effective transitioning sentences. I wanted to see if she knew how to connect ideas from the previous paragraph with a new paragraph, and she did. Even though it didn't happen right away, I definitely feel like she learned something from our session. I am so glad because although I was excited about tutoring, once she sat down in front of me and had absolutely nothing, I was afraid that I didn't know where to start. Once the words started flowing, so did the ideas and she actually ended up producing a pretty good paper. I was pleased, but I hope next time will be even better!