Chloe TS #2 (child)

My first tutoring session with PJ focused on improving his reading comprehension. We read the novel Hatchet together, one of PJ’s favorite books. He’s read the novel before, so he remembered many details of the story. But there were also some nuances of the story that he didn’t notice during his first read. For example, in the first chapter the author references a secret that the protagonist, Brian, knows about his parents’ divorce. The author is purposely mysterious about the secret, but I am sure it will be uncovered later in the book.

His reading skills are very good, so we need to focus more on reading comprehension and vocabulary. We talked about some of the less common words, like “hokey” and “coma”. These words are not used very often in children’s books, so I understand his unfamiliarity with them. We also focused on the use of symbolic language- metaphors for example. The novel described Brian’s mother’s voice as sounding “like something thin that would break if you touched it”. PJ wasn’t sure what this meant, so we talked about what it could mean for a voice to be “thin” or “breakable”- depending on how someone is feeling, the tone or pitch of their voice can change. Brian’s mother was having a hard time emotionally with the divorce, so maybe she was feeling sad and that is why her voice was “thin”. Overall, I tried to make it fun and interesting for him, and PJ seemed to enjoy talking about the book. I'm excited to continue working with him.