Last week, I spent time with a student who seemed disinterested in working at first. We were created sentences from a list of vocabulary words. WIth each sentence, we slowly became more familiar with each other, and she started opening up and telling me about her interests. She put her mind to coming up with good sentences, and I supported her by complimenting her creativity and telling her that she was doing an awesome job. When I did this, she became more confident, which carried her through the rest of the exercise. I enjoyed working with her because she wanted her assignment to be correct and she wanted to learn. After we finished the assignment, she mentioned something about wanting to learn on the weekends because she has free time and wants to be a better reader. I have already started thinking of books to suggest to her.

Contributed by Alison Ledbetter