Tutor Sessions - Log #1:

I tutored a 5^th grader last night on an art/writing project in which the student is suppose to outline the creation process and include what materials would be needed for making a smaller replica of a mission church.  His data set stems from field research at an actual mission in San Diego.

The first activity we did was clustering – getting his recollections on paper.  I thought this would have been an easy task for him to do, but he seemed either bored with the activity or too preoccupied with “other ideas” of what his teacher wanted; so, rather than having him free-write, I asked specific questions about some of the things he saw on his trip.  His ideas started taking better form and he began a list (i. e. – bells, statues, benches, grass, tombs, etc.)  After doing so, I asked if he could generate a floor map or blueprint of the mission and its immediate areas.  “Oh okay!”, he said excitedly.

By approaching the project in this way, I knew the blueprint would not only give him more creative insight in creating the model, but more importantly, the activity raised his cognition.  I noticed how often he’d scratch his head as he would try to remember as much as he could and I found that he was going beyond what he could recollect.  At this point, he was using his creative input gained from the activity to embellish the details of his diagram with personal references (i. e. – a statue named Father Serra was renamed Father Michael, the name of his dad).  When he finished the map, he confessed not how much fun it was, but how EASY he said it’ll be to make the replica.  He said, “Daaaaaaang!  This is gonna be easy"!  He had started to outline in his head what materials would be needed to complete his project.

The use of art and drawing has positively impacted the child’s way of thinking and participation towards this project.  I mean, it wasn’t like I had to explain to him what the purpose of doing the drawing was.  He just seemed to be enthused about drawing in general.  Rather than relying on traditional outline models like those using Roman numerals and numbers which tend to squelch intellectual and imaginative development of a child, art has allowed the child to participate and nurture his/her thoughts into schoolwork.  Most importantly, the child becomes aware of at least one way in how to achieve personal success: "I'm happy!", he says.