10-18-12 Activities and Reflection Student 2

Field Notes:
Goals: Narratives
*No school (Fall Break)
*Talked about the Transy/UK basketball game coming up, which led to a discussion of sports being played on each of our birthdays tend to be cursed with UK losing on them.
*Saw "narratives" at the top of these notes and got excited
     *Said he already knows how to do
     *Told him we'd work on the planning/organizing
*Began narrative instruction
     *Got off topic as I modeled drawing
*Began pre-writing his own story at 4:58, finished 5:08
     *He did the drawings and I wrote his dictated notes
     *Stopped to look up hardest substance on earth
*Began working on story on computer (not iPad) at 5:10, finished 5:20
     *First, left notes in other room as we went to the office with a computer.
     *Spent several minutes looking for a picture to go with his story before he actually started typing
     *Actually began typing at 5:13
          *Changed several small details from original prewriting
     *Had a hunt and peck method of typing--funny since he tries to keep fingers on home row when using the iPad!
     *Actually used the spell check to help
     *Went back to do title
          *Pointed out that the formula actually wants us to do this step first, but it's totally OK to use a "working" title and go back to change it.
*Watched YouTube videos of Minecraft
     *Seemed to be his inspiration for the story. I asked if it was and he said no, but his drawings had quite a resemblance and his story had the same characters.

Reflection:
This is the first time I've really deviated from my first student. Obviously no two sessions are exactly alike and this student has had several sessions where I chuck my lesson plan out the window and do what he needs help doing.  But he's still followed my first student in terms of activities and as I've refined the instruction, has even caught up.  Since this student prefers stories over expository, I figured our time was better spent learning the pre-writing process for narratives. I suspect my third student will prefer narratives as well.  Just another reason one-on-one sessions are best for these students. Maybe it's a little more work on my part, but we're not using tons of time working on concepts that 1) the students seem to understand and 2) don't actually interest the student. We've done it, they get it but prefer something else, we move on. Luxury. But hey, he was excited!

Overall, his story was of about the same quality as his non-fiction--short, has the details from pre-writing, but not really expanded upon.  But, the story followed a logical order. I suspect some of his short and sweetness is due to the fact that this writing was not for school. I wonder how his short story assignment from forever ago would have gone had he done this method of pre-writing instead of answering written questions.  I'm kind of anxious for another short story assignment, just to try it out!