· Preference for tutoring people with same gender. We may have to adjust sometime.
· To get connected, it will be good if we stick to our students and if they are interested in going to/have to go others sometimes (tutor cannot make it, different subjects, etc) we will make adjustments accordingly.
· Most of us prefer teaching by using boards, but since we don’t have enough, try to bring some paper pads.
· We will try to arrange white boards. Sairam has one, Cherry will try to bring from ISA and Vijay’s going to talk with Reben regarding the same. Those who could not make to the meeting but can arrange boards, please let us know
· We don’t want to pressurize any of the tutors for this but just to give heads up. Asking questions to students is a good technique but sometimes it can create awkwardness. So think carefully before asking questions and prefer the ones which they feel comfortable with or you think they can answer. Also, while giving some example, choose it wisely because we don’t know what might offend them.
· We have seen lots of computers at that place and we are thinking of utilizing those in the class. If anybody has any idea, you are most welcome to share with us. For example, it may include creating websites, some simple arithmetic games, etc
· Remind Ben for asking students to bring their books, notes to tutoring session
· One of the most important points we discussed is the icebreaker activities. We will start with some of the fun activities like games, some kind of experiments getting them interested in physics, chemistry, biology, math. Here are some of the activities we came up with:
o Physics experiments:
§ Vijay has set of telescopes and lenses. We will start with that on next Saturday.
§ Vijay also has a laser and UV light which will be surely interesting. We can demo them simple diffraction experiment.
§ Sairam has an idea of printing some text with 1px font and make a microscope to read it.
§ Kishor is going to assist in these experiments.
o Chemistry experiments:
§ Tina has idea of using packaging peanuts and acetone chemistry visual expt.
§ Potassium permanganate experiment: (Sairam is really interested in showing this J) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPqdlR_X1Vk
o Biological experiments:
§ Sayali has an idea about the microorganisms that change color upon growth.
§ If it is possible, we will go with Shilpa’s idea of frog dissecting demo in tutoring sessions
o Fun with Computer:
§ Ekhlas will try to run his flight simulator on his laptop and if that works, he will do a demo
§ Ekhlas, Kishor and Sairam are interested in showing how to build a website.
o Other Activities:
§ We can play some of the games they like e.g. - pool.
§ Jeff came up with an idea of a math game – putting a number on the back of a person and asking him some questions giving clue to identify that number. We can play with math in this case.
If anybody has more ideas, please feel free to edit this document and let others know what you have in mind. Also, if you want to assist somebody in above mentioned activities, you are welcome to do so and if you have an idea want somebody to assist you, we all are glad to do that J
Agenda for Next Saturday session on Feb 13th:
1) 30 mins.. Ice breakers! – Starting with Vijay’s telescopes!
2) 30 mins.. Webpages/Websites/Cool Science Exp
3) 30 mins.. Helping with the classwork and homework. Maths and Science!
