First Tutoring Experience

Last week I had my first tutoring session with a student in a CAT-W class here in LaGuardia Comminity College. Our task was to help the students in any way their paper needed in order to make it a stronger paper capable of receiving a passing grade during the CAT-W. The topic of the paper was Immigration and how it helped or hurt the American economy. Each of us were assigned to one or two students. After first introducing myself and reading over the students paper together out-loud, I noticed the student had a paper that was good in ideas and examples (I think because immigration was an issue familiar to him and his family, so it was easier to think of examples) but needed work in organization and "flow". For this reason, I believe this was more of a "Structure/Organizational Tutorial". I first started by trying to go through his body paragraphs, which he told me were his main concerns, and just work through the problems as we go. But after some time I realized that I needed to get the writer to connect what he was trying to say(the ideas in his head) with what he was writing. His examples were good but they were not exactly connecting to his main idea. After realizing this I took out a pen and some paper and made something similar to a skeleton outline. I started by asking him "What is the main point of this paragraph" and he would tell me and I would bullite point it on the paper. Then I would ask "What are else are you stating (examples) in this paragraph that helps this main idea", and I would write what he said under his main idea and lastly I would ask "How does this relate back to what you said in the introduction". We did this for his two body paragraphs, taking out anything that seemed like "fluff" (Sentences with no real meaning/connection/ or just repetition) and moving around other sentences to have the body connect better with the introduction and with what the student was originally trying to say. I did not want to focus on Lower Order Concerns but knew there were some things that had to be addressed, so after finishing the skeletal outline and going over the ideas presented in both the introduction and conclusion paragraph, we went back and read it aloud together. I did not stop at any words that needed to be connected but told him were he needed the most work (tenses and some misspellings/word choice his teacher all ready pointed out)