Narrative Report

Reading Extension at Puro National High School , December 01, 2022

An announcement was sent saying that we will be going to a certain school to conduct
reading extension. I felt the excitement because I do enjoy tutoring other people and my
experience to it was also one of my inspirations to take up my program. I didn’t prepared that
much because we were told that all the materials will be provided, so what I did is to prepare
myself. Arriving at the school empowered my excitement and eagerness to meet my tutee.
There was also the curiosity of how these struggling readers are. I was one of the students
that were chosen to have two tutees. As we arrive in the classroom and were told to pick our
tutees, I didn’t really look into them carefully; I just randomly approached two learners
sitting together. I had to get a chair but another student from the other class approached the
tutees I chose but I didn’t back down and told that I have chosen them first. Finding a tutee
was a challenge itself for me, so I believed that the session proper will be more challenging.

Once we’re all settled, of course the very first thing we did was to introduce each
other and that’s when I found out that one of them was my neighbour before and is also my
distant relative- Omar Reotorio and the other one was Raver Jahn Sicat. After the
introduction and a little chit chat to build rapport, I made them read one paragraph to identify
their difficulties. Raver can almost read perfectly, there were just some words which he can’t
read in one go but once you tell him how to read it, he was able to pronounce it properly.
Another problem is short term memory, he easily forget what was taught to him. The same
thing applies to Omar, but he’s case isn’t something better compared to Raver. There are
more words he cannot read, he also struggles in phonemes. There was a section in the
material where all words have “ea” or the ȇ sound. I kept on repeating that the sound of ea is
long e but he can’t pick it up. For example is the word “jean”, he read it as jen, and the word
“bean” which he read as ban. I didn’t gave up until he was able to read all the words
correctly. After making them read the words I had to make them read the paragraph with the
same words again to check their progress. Thankfully, there were only few words that they
were not unable to recognize. Another set of materials were distributed to us, these were
more simple than the first set I gave them. I had no problem with Raver but Omar still
struggles. I also had to remind them of the difference between the sound of long and short a,
long and short e as well as o and u. I had to repeat it not just twice for them to remember
what I am teaching them. I also randomly let them read the words that we had read from the
first set of materials to see if they still remember what they have learned. We had to take a
little break, just enough for us to breathe and continued. I asked them if they are still okay
and still willing to continue and they didn’t hesitate to say yes. I gave them some examples of
words with the same sounds like “man” and “can”. After that I told them that they will be
competing with each other. The instruction was “I am going to give you a word then you will
be giving another word that have the same sound as the one I mentioned. If you want to
answer, you can raise your hand or just say “ate” since it’s just us three”. The two easily
understood my instruction and started the game. We’ve reached number 7 and Raver was the
only one who can answer though I can see it through Omar that he is trying. Another material
came in so we stopped there. The material was a short story titled “How to fly a kite”. I was
quite worried because we are just in the title but they stop reading. I asked them what’s
wrong and they answered that they don’t know how to read the word fly, so I explained it to
them again how to read it, after a few tries we succeeded, but still Omar is struggling. They
also do not know how to read the word “kite”, they read it as “kit” instead. Throughout
reading the story I have to remind them again and again how kite is read but they tend to
forget it once they encounter another word. A solution that I have thought was to introduce to
them what a kite is. I translated it to our local language and ask them if they know how to fly
one. Until the very end, I checked if they know how to read the word kite. Some of the words
that they struggled to read in the story was sail, new and wind, the rest is all good.

After the session, I suggested that they keep on reading even after their playtime after
class to enhance their reading skill and they agreed. I hope that they are doing it, but if not, at
least I tried. Indeed, from the very start of the session, I have observed that Omar struggles
more compared to Raver. Raver just needs more push and he can improve. I enjoyed the
whole session and I haven’t thought of giving up even once during the tutorial session. It was
quite hard but it was also fun. That day was so worth it, I made new friends and was also able
to help them in reading.