On 8/17/2020, five members of the Syosset AYLUS (Alan Huang, Jasmine Chen, Leo Cheng, John Trach and Ryan Leung) team-taught an one-hour introductory class in the subject of English to 6 newly immigrated highschool students with varying degrees of proficiency in English.
Today, we started our English course content which consisted of 3 parts, reading, writing, and speaking. We first introduced the tutors and then moved on to the students. Then to build stronger bonds, we played an icebreaker game called complete the story. The idea of the game is to give each of them a chance to speak english while also being able to have fun. The goal is to continue a story while using a designated starting letter and category. After the first person goes, the next person’s letter is the first person’s next letter of the alphabet. For example if the first person’s initial letter is A, then the next person’s word is B.
Afterwards, Alan separated the tutors and the students into three groups, under the themes of “Reading English with Confidence” led by Leo, “Writing English with Confidence” led by Jasmine and John, and “Speaking English with Confidence” led by Alan and Ryan.
Leo Cheng taught the reading “going to the movies” to probe the student’s initial comprehension of reading in general. Since the reading taught was too easy this time, the next reading will be SAT level text. There was also a word of the day that will help expand their vocabulary and allow higher fluency in the english language.
Alan Huang and Ryan Leung covered speaking warm up exercises that consisted of saying sentences in a fluid and consistent manner. They also made our students read passages to better express their emotions. Next, the tutors gave tips on enunciation to the students so that their sentences are more natural sounding than a robotic and chopped up sentence.
John Thach and Jasmine Chen taught the writing portion. In this first class, achieving familiarity with the students and assessing their current English and writing abilities were the primary objectives. Thus the tutors prepared a short, orientational lesson plan that introduced the students to the various types of literature in writing, followed by a short activity that required students to write short introductions about themselves.
The entire class was taught in English, but activity instructions were provided in both English and Chinese to avoid confusion and foster a more comfortable environment for the students to work in. There were three rounds of breakout sessions so that all students could have a full experience with all the tutors, their subjects and teaching styles. The last round was very rushed, so we believe a 1.5 hour would be more appropriate for the next time.
The following students volunteered in today’s tutoring program: Alan Huang (1 hour), Jasmine Chen (1 hour), John Trach (1 hour), Leo Cheng (1 hour) and Ryan Leung (1 hour).
Keep up the great work, Syosset AYLUS!