"The sound is /b/. The name is b. Say b."

Today I completed the second half of my tutor training to begin volunteering with the Laubach Literacy Council. I am so excited to begin teaching English to a small group of students. I must confess that after the first half of the training (last Saturday), I questioned whether Laubach was a  good fit for me. The training had focused on teaching an immigrant their first few oral words of English. And I thought that I would be better suited to teaching at a higher ESL level (I have all this complex English grammar in my brain!). But in today's session, we worked on getting a student to reading a few words, then sentences, which then culminates into a story. Myself and all the other tutors were exceedingly excited at the thought that this story might be the first significant piece of text someone would read in English. Here is that story:

This is a bird.

This is a cup.

This is a dish.

This is a fish.

This is a girl.

This is a hand.

The girl has a bird.

The girl has a cup.

The girl has a dish.

The girl has a fish.

The girl has a bird in her hand.

The girl has a cup in her hand.

The girl has a dish in her hand.

The girl has a fish in her hand.

There's absolutely no plot, conflict, or resolution. And it's ten times better than any story I've ever written.