Lesson Plan 6

February 10's session came as a bit of a surprise when we received our e-mails the Saturday evening before. All of our lesson plans before tackled only one letter of the Filipino alphabet at a time (with the exception of the review lessons where we went on and on with the letters 'M' and 'A'). If what I gather from our professor is correct, this is also the first time in the Literacy Training Service (LTS) Program that the tutors will do two letters at a time. Honestly, when I first read the e-mail I was nervous on whether I could keep this up until the end of the semester.

To start the session, I had a little review with my student Arvin. I asked him what letters we had previously tackled, and he was able to name all four. ('M', 'A', 'S' and 'L')

Ang Kaarawan ni Ola

This session's story was entitled Ang Kaarawan ni Ola, or "Ola's Birthday". It's a very light story about a girl named Ola, who wakes up on her birthday and receives a gift each from her parents, and breaks fast with them.

The story did a very good job of incorporating the two letters of the lesson. After asking Arvin a few reading comprehension questions, I decided to change the routine a bit. Instead of introducing the new letters like I had in the previous weeks, I had him guess what the new letters were. (I told him we were tackling two letters a session, of course.) As the answers to the reading comprehension questions are words that generally start with the new letter of the session, identifying two was a bit tricky for Arvin. Some of the words were 'Ola', 'opisina' (office), 'Oktubre' (October), 'bibingka' (a type of rice cake in the Philippines) and 'berde' (green).

After some encouragement and a few tries, Arvin got the letters. (In case you haven't, they are 'O' and 'B')

Phonological Awareness

After tackling the story, we moved on to a few more activities. One of them was the photo matching, where Arvin was given a batch of pictures and a batch of name cards. He had to correctly match the pictures and names. He took a bit longer as compared to similar exercises in the past, probably due to the sudden increase in words available for the activity. That day, he also learned what the Filipino word for bear was ("oso").

When we had packed up, we had a short comprehension activity, wherein I read him five short sentences and asked him about them. He was able to answer the simple ones, but when it came to some of the questions, he could not correctly state the answer. I guess this is forgivable, he must also be adjusting to the two-letter-a-session approach just as we volunteer tutors are.