Reflection+2




 * __Reflection for February 21st and 23 rd __**

Miguel and I finished the outline that listed the different facts and accounted for the citations. Our citations were in a non-formal form (we just listed the title of the book or which encyclopedia or website), so once we finished the outline, we worked on getting the citations into the proper, full MLA format. Once we had all of our information and completion of the citations, we began writing the facts in the packet, which featured the layout of the Storykit with the square for pictures and the lines for the information. We completed three or four pages before the session ended on Thursday. The step that we are is completing the rough draft packet.

The sessions on Tuesdays are already short, but this Tuesday’s was especially short because the teachers interrupted to review and discuss how to take notes and how to format them. This extremely shortened period, with the interruption of the presentation, made it significantly more difficult to get and keep Miguel’s focus. When I come into the school, he is always playing a game on the iPad and on Tuesday it was particularly challenging to get him attentive to working and once we got working, we were all re-grouped to talk about the notes, so Tuesday was a day when not much was accomplished. This can be dealt with by me requesting and reminding Miguel at the end of our sessions that he really needs to be ready for me when I come and then praise him highly when he is. Thursday was far more productive and Miguel did an awesome job of staying focused and motivated with me.

I was more supportive this week than last week because I had a clearer agenda for what I wanted to accomplish during the sessions and this seemed to help Miguel more, by him having a direction and a goal. At the beginning of each session, once I had his attention, I outlined what I hoped to accomplish during our time together that day and gave him the “checklist” of what we had to do first, then what we would move onto, and where we would hopefully finish. Also, we made a few “deals” this week. For example, I told him that if he found one fact about adulthood for the Thursday session, I would come on Thursday with an article with Jesse Jackson’s accomplishments. He obviously liked this idea that we would truly be partners in searching out the facts, but on Thursday he came without his fact, so we used my article to find items for both adulthood and accomplishments. In our next session, I could work on trying to keep him more accountable and make him do more of the work himself. I am still trying to find the balance between not helping enough and helping too much, spoon feeding him all the answers and giving him no support or help.

Miguel made the goal for us (totally unprompted by me, surprisingly) that we should try to finish the entire packet next week. This will be a very ambitious goal, but I hope that it will motivate him to get started right away and just plow through it. After we have the facts written, we will discuss which pages he can draw an illustration for and which will have imported images. Because getting images from viable and reputable sources (not just using Google Images) may take a while, I may have him give me a list of specific images he wants and my homework will be to get them for him for the following session.