Second Tutoring Experience

During my second the task for the paper the students were working on was to chose an educational policy from a list provided and research it further. The topics were "No Child Left Behind", "Raise to the Top", "Charter School Movement" and "School Voucher Movement". This time around I was helping two students with their papers, so naturally I was very nervous. Both students did not have much work to start their papers, one students had an idea for her paper, the other student did not have anything at all, not even a topic. For both students the main focus was getting their ideas in order and creating a basic essay outline they can follow to continue work outside of the classroom. the first student had a kind of "Bubble mapping" chart where she listed possible subjects to discuss during her writing and we started from there. I started with this student because at the beginning of the tutoring session I only had her, later on was when i was also assigned tot he second student. The first student showed me her ideas and told me her topic was charter schools and that her further research would revolve around the idea that they are not as advanced or helpful as most would claim to be. Her mapping was on the right track but was still a little unorganized and vague. So we started a new mapping chart with her main focus circled in the center. Then, we extended lines from he center circle and choose some ideas from her previous bubble that would backup her main point best. After this we extended more lines and bubbles based on details to support the claims. Each idea (second step) would become the main focus of a paragraph, and each bubble extended form that would be the details. Around this time was when i was assigned a second student, so I asked my first student to find these examples and extra details from her class reading (because that was a requirement for their research papers) while i worked with the second student.