Award-Winning Private Essay Editing Tutoring in Marietta, GA

The student was having trouble understanding his book for school and getting through the reading. He was open to suggestion and took notes. We made a plan for him to finish his book by Saturday, so he could use Sunday to go back and review the chapters that he had skimmed. My hope is that he finishes the book on time and stays on top of the following assignments.

We went over "Like Water for Chocolate" and covered the general plot of the book. We then discussed themes, especially of magical realism, food, and family tradition. One major theme we examined was the role that emotions play in the creation of food, and its reception. Different people react differently to the food, based on the person and situation that created it. She then wrote a practice question on this topic. The main thing the student has to work on for her exam is being confident and putting down ideas! Also, a specific knowledge of a few examples will be very beneficial. We also went over how to prepare to get the most out of her one-on-one session with her teacher tomorrow.

Finding a set of early readers booklets over the weekend, I was excited about the student starting w/this 1st grade early reader series, especially as he's ONLY in Kindergarten. We started off w/ the story of the monkey Hip and focused on the short "i" and "a" sounds. We reviewed w/ some flash cards for site words he'd been given. He was rewarded by getting to use the Big Pink Highlighter to write a :-). We then went on to read another early reader booklet, practice w/ another set of flash cards, write 3 words, and read the last early reader booklet about Ned and a Cab. His reward was to get to color a favorite page of the black & white booklet w/ three crayons. He wanted to use more, but I said he'd have to spell the names of the colors. He chose to spell yellow, blue and red. After some practice, he spelled them and got to use two more colors.:-) That was a fun culminating activity. After the lesson was over, the student's mother gave me a list of frequency word's he is responsible for learning and some additional ones given more recently that she wrote on the list. I look forward to working with the student on these and mastering them.

We went over test strategies for tomorrow's proficiency. Examples: Read questions (and all possible choices) thoroughly (don't give up or get discouraged and move on!), look for clues (prefixes, suffixes, transition words, figurative language), use context. The student's going to do great!

Today, we read through 3/4 of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birth Mark." This story is the topic of the student's final paper. His assignment, due the next day, was to find thirty quotes supporting the thesis of his essay. He had to find quotes on the general topics of physical versus inner beauty and the characteristics and actions of the main character, Aylmer, that supported his thesis. We took turns reading and discussing each paragraph. In addition to discussing the meaning of each paragraph, we also stopped to identify potentially useful quotes for his essay. The student was great at interpreting the story and seems to be getting better at/more comfortable with digging into deeper meanings rather than just reciting the facts of the story. I hope he continues to engage as much as he has today.

The student had questions to answer on the novella, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, which we worked on. He worked on vocabulary words, studying flashcards and reviewing pronunciation, definitions, and connotations.