Tracking of Progression for Dana

Dana 19th June 2011

Today’s session did not turn out to be as fruitful as I thought it would be. However it is still quite pleasing to see that even though Dana did not improve from her previous score of 9/14, she managed to maintain it at the same standard, which is quite good considering that this list of vocabulary words are for Primary 4 students. It was somewhat disappointing to see that she did not heed my advice to read more challenging books. It was even more frustrating when I learnt that she had read the books a few times before and they were books meant for 6-9 year olds. Sure, the books match her age. However it is quite sad when a child is not stretched to his/her fullest potential. Who knows what she will achieve if she does get out of her comfort zone.

Dana 12th June 2011

I must really take my hat off to Dana. After going through the list of 14 vocabulary words once, she managed to retain most of the information in her head. She is Primary 2 and yet she is able to define words like “analyze” and “apparent”. She managed to define 9/14 words this time, a huge improvement from the last session. However it was disappointing that she is letting her bank of vocabulary go to waste. She did not attempt to challenge herself by reading harder books but instead remained in her comfort zone, something that I would not expect to see after 11 sessions. I coaxed her into reading a harder book and hopefully she will do so the next session. But as for today, I am still quite pleased with her performance.

Dana 1st June 2011

I started on a new set of flashcards with Dana today. I prepared a set of cards containing 14 words taken from a list of vocabulary words meant for Primary 4 students. Unsurprisingly, she only managed to define and use 3 words in a sentence. However it is comforting to note that, with some guidance, she managed to more or less infer the meanings of some words. I will try to help her remember more words the next session so hopefully she can utilize the words she has just learnt. We played the vocabulary games today and I realized that Dana is rather quick-thinking. She always managed to give an answer within 30 seconds. I will try to venture into other areas like creating a story to see if she really has the creative mind that we seek to develop in all the other children.

Dana 29th May 2011

After 3 weeks, we finally resumed our reading session as per normal. I tried to conduct the flashcard games the way I did with Kai Qing but it did not seem to work out very well. Dana wasn’t concentrating on the flashcards and she could not remember most of the words after missing 3 weeks of the session. However when I conducted the flashcard games the usual way, she was able to recognize most of the words and even form sentences with it. Since she has not much of a problem with most of these words, I will be preparing a new set of words with her. Instead of reading, what we did today was to try and change the ending of a particular story. She chose Geronimo Stilton and the Mysterious Cheese Thief as it was her favorite book. I was also very happy when Dana told me that she scored 67.5 / 70 for her English test and she was the highest scorer in class. I was very glad that she made an improvement from the previous term. It was an enjoyable session and we had a lot of fun but most importantly I believed that this session is beneficial to her even though we did not do reading.

Dana 24th April 2011

Dana has once again proven that she has a good command of English. Out of the 30 words that I obtained from the internet, she was unable to recognize about 15 of them. However, this number does not represent the actual number of words that she has not seen before. Dana can pronounce and can use many of those words in a sentence; however, she is unable to give me the definition of those words, which is why the number is at 15. At the age of 9, it is surprising that she knows some of the “harder words” such as “Brilliant” and “Ambition”. I will be expecting to see a sharp drop in the number of words that she does not recognize in the next session.