Name of Artifact: Observation
Date: Spring 2003
Course: FL 692 (Independent Project)
Rationale:
As an independent research project I tutored a high school student who was having
trouble in math. Math has always been my worst subject, so finding ways to help her with her homework was often
a challenge. She told me that the kind of math that she did in her native country was very different than the math they
were doing in her high school in the U.S.
After several meetings, I discovered that she was not familiar with the vocabulary
her teacher used to solve problems. She knew words like "multiply" and "fraction" but not words such as "times"
and "plus." Although the math may have been different, the real problem is that she lacked a knowledge of the working
math terms used by her teacher and classmates.
I designed some activities to give her opportunities to practice using practical
math-related vocabulary. After working extensively with the vocabulary, her test scores dramatically improved.
She went back to her home country shortly thereafter.
In this tutoring experience I experimented with several different techniques
before I found one that best worked for this particular student. I learned here that each student learns differently.
This student, I found over time, learns best by doing. Allowing her to teach me math, using words from our list
of vocabulary, seemingly helped her to develop linguistic confidence.
