First reflection of teaching at home - Summer, 2021

Today was my first class with Poorvi. I was anxious about what she would think about the class, I didn’t want to make her feel like it is a tuition or school but instead a reading club. Poorvi is my maid’s daughter and I wanted her to feel welcomed when she arrived. She is in 4th grade in an English medium school. I picked out an easy book for her and told her to start reading the first chapter. She was able the reading almost everything except a few lengthy words. She asked me whenever she was not able to read a word.  The problem I faced was, she couldn’t understand what she was reading. Therefore, for my next class I’m aiming to work on her understanding of words and pronunciation and help her know the meanings of atleast two words that mean the same. I am hoping that she can excel in her school after these classes. 

Today was my second class with Poorvi. I was hoping to see some improvements and had a few things planned to improve her understanding. When she started reading the firstly, I noticed that she was able to recall all the meanings I had told her in the first class. It made me feel good about the fact that she can remember the meanings. She was able to pronounce all the words I had taught her in the first class like through, though, swam, sold and a few more. I had found a method that would help her understand what she is reading without my guidance. I told her to underline the words she knew the meaning of and try to frame to sentences with those words. It helped her a lot in reading by herself but the only problem I faced that she got stuck on a few lines where she didn’t understand any word or could even read. That is why even with this method she will have to memorise a few lengthy words. She was stuck on names of people and my method didn’t help a lot in this case. But I feel like she would be able to tell the difference when she starts to read gradually. So, I hope it helps her understanding a bit more. Just to give it a head start I told her to write “P” next to all the words which were proper nouns. In the next class I would be aiming to improve her pronunciations and understanding and check if the new method is helping her read without me being there to help her with every word. 

Today while helping Poorvi understand the meanings, I noticed that she was not able to remember the meanings of a few words that I had explained to her a few times in the past. She kept forgetting the meaning of words from the previous paragraph when she was reading the next one. I knew that underlining the words would work but there were a few word meanings which she must learn. I didn’t want to force her to memorise a long list of complicated words that she had never even heard of. Hence, I told her to write a list of underlined words that she couldn’t pronounce or understand. I told her to write the meanings of it in Hindi so she would be able to understand it easily. I gave her the list to take home and use it whenever she didn’t know the meanings of any words. It is just like her own dictionary. In the next class I am aiming help her understand the meaning by using the list which we made today, underlining the words and rearranging the words she understands to create a sentence. I might also start focusing more on her pronunciation so it gives her more confidence while reading and other people can understand her clearly. 

Today I am happy that my class is growing, with a new student joining. His name is Harsh.  He brought his school English textbook so that I could know how much English he already knows. When I told him to read, I was surprised that he was able to read just like Poorvi but the only problem that he faced was understanding, which is the same as Poorvi's. I made him read one small chapter from his textbook, then gave him a little lower-level book to read. I was trying to arrange how to teach two kids at the same time but in the end, I managed to figure it out. I gave Poorvi a task to read one chapter and try to understand it while writing down the words she didn't understand in her notebook. On the other hand, I was working with Harsh. He is young and playful so it was a little hard to get him to read for long as he would easily get distracted by the different stuff in my house or room and other people coming in and out. But still, we read the first chapter of the book I gave him. And we wrote down the words he didn’t understand on a sheet of paper. I am hoping to make him a notebook too after a few classes. Poorvi gave me the word list and I told her the meaning of all the words she had written down. Then I read the chapter by myself and asked Poorvi to explain everything that she understood from reading it. She had twisted a few parts but it was a definite improvement. I felt happy that I am able to help her in reading better English and I am hoping to do the same for many other children. I gave them the book they are reading so that if they want, they would be able to read through the week. Then I rewarded both of them with candy. 

In today’s class, I noticed that the pages with the word list were getting crushed and had stains. So, I decided to give Poorvi a notebook. Which was way more organized as we got to make different columns about the words she knew and the ones she didn’t. We were even able to sort the word out in different chapters. As we didn’t have classes for a long time because of the festival season, Poorvi was behind and had forgotten some of the meanings and pronunciation. I gave her a few minutes to read the previous chapters and the word list before we further continued as she would have found it hard to understand the word in the next chapters. I gave her advice on counting 2 seconds before starting a new sentence and 1 second if there is a comma. I gave her the book to take home and read all the previous chapters. There were not many new accomplishments in this class as we were revising everything we did in the past. But I am hoping that we would be on track for next week's class. 

Now that  I have started to increase the number of children which I would work on. I noticed that I would not be able to gather children in my house and teach them. So, I had to come up with a situation. Me and my father had a discussion on this and have decided to start doing online. My father runs a start-up. This means that we have a few extra windows laptops lying around in our house. So, now I have given one laptop to Poori and Harsh. I have explain them that after a week when I have free time in my winter break, I would help them set up the laptop and explain them which software (zoom, google meet, skype) I would use to take classes. I also told Poorvi and Malti (her mother) to start looking for children in their village or school which I would be able to help. 

Poorvi had improved in her meaning as whenever I was asking Harsh different word meaning, Poorvi would ask me if she could answer. It made me feel happy that I am able to help her and make an improvement. I decided to make the word list notebook more detailed and jot down the words of every chapter. I also make a red mark of words that she kept forgetting. On the other hand, as Harsh was my second student I was able to apply all the different techniques I had just started on Poorvi straight up. I have noticed that Harsh despite being younger than Poorvi, knows more vocabulary than her. He is able to memorise the words faster and knows meanings of a few too. There are some mistakes comman in both of them like they don’t stop in a full stop or pause when there is a comma. I try to remind them about it so that whenever they have to read aloud to an audience, they are able to read fluently. 

In the next class I am hoping to do a fun class with them. Which would have games and a few fun activities. Those activities and games would also help them in learning meanings. Some of the games I have planned till now are word finding, word ladder and hangman. I would try to make sure they understand the words and know the meanings of them. I wanted to do such a class as Poorvi has been really nice and kind. She listens to me and tries her best. While, Harsh is young and as I have told in my previous blogs I am not tries to make my movement into a tuition. This is why I wanted to show him that my classes are not like school or tuition but a fun and interactive way to learn how to read.