C O L L A B O R A T I O N

As the title implies my second tutoring session on Monday May 12, 2014 was a group session made of two ENG099 students who through collaboration not only helped each other develop their essays but aided me with tutoring practice.

We employed a read aloud method where each student read their work while the other student and myself listened. I requested participation by asking them to make some comments on each others work after they read. The first student who read had already developed an introduction and three supporting paragraphs but was missing a closing paragraph and had a minor challenge in ensuring supporting sentences matched topic sentence. The second student had about a page of writing but it was a solid block of ideas that needed teasing out. His major challenge was that he was writing as though he agreed with the piece but he didn't. He had mixed feelings about it and was afraid to follow his own opinion. I explained to him that as long as his summary was on point he had the right to his own opinion.

In an attempt to aid student B, who needed to tease out his thoughts, we employed clustering. Through conversations with him I was able to write his topic in a circle at the top of the page and then orient his ideas with examples under the first circle while connecting them by a line to the topic again.

While these events were in action, student A was revisiting supporting sentences and adding to a paragraph.