Taylor TP# 2

Today I met with Cynthia for the second time. She told me that pronunciation, speaking, and listening were the three key things she wanted to work on with me. In the spirit of Halloween, I went on the census site and worked with her on this mini article:
http://www.census.gov/multimedia/www/radio/profile_america/profile-even-22.php
First I read the article aloud to her and asked her to write down as many words as she could that she recognized. After that, I went over them with her. A many of them were numbers and some were parts of sentences. From now on, I will not give articles with numbers because it is a give away haha. After reviewing the words that she wrote down, I gave her the script and had her read it aloud and circle any words she was unfamiliar with. I also had my own script in which I highlighted all the sounds and words she had trouble pronouncing. Overall, Cynthia did very well with only minor problems with the th- sound and -ow sound. We also went over all the words and phrases she circled such as "...tipped the scale..." and "satisfy."

Afterward, I made two sentences with many th- and -ow sounds such as "The Halloween art show will have one thousand carved pumpkins." She read them and we corrected the sounds together. It was funny with all the faces we were making trying to exaggerate the -ow and th- sounds. Finally, Cynthia brought out her vocabulary book and I had her pick out five words she had problems remembering. This exercise caught me off guard because some of these words were hard to explain such as cohesion or homogeneous. At the end of the hour, I wanted to surprise her with a fun activity with a popular song by Taylor Swift so that she can learn more about pop culture however, my internet stopped working. Perhaps we can do a day of songs and lyrics. Anyway, Cynthia said she would like more help pronouncing th's and -ow so the search is on for articles and passages or tongue twisters with those sounds!