Well to my surprise, I was actually late again. I thought that because I knew the way to the school I'd be able to leave at a later time and arrive to the school as scheduled, but I hit traffic, what a disaster that was. But anyways, when I got to the school everyone was already there waiting for our advisor to pick us up. After waiting for about 10 minutes we realized that she wasn't going to pick us up, and that we had to meet her at the room. When we got there she explained to us what we should do every morning (since we hadn't met the week before due to winter break the elementary schools had). She gave us our assigned groups and told us which room we would be meeting in. She showed us what and where to document things, and then spoke to us individually about what we should be working on when we meet with our students. I would be working specifically on "sight words" and working on a different poem with them each week.
Our advisor showed us how to play the sight word game, which consisted of a game board with six columns going across and five columns going down. Before the game the teacher (I) will pick six different sight words and write them into the empty slots on the bottom row. Each row is labeled 1,2,3,4,5, or 6. The student will take turns rowing the dice and depending on which number it lands on, the student will have to make a sentence with the sight word that is in the sixth column. When the student is done making a sentence, the teacher will write in the sight word in the slot above the word. The game ends when there is one entire column filled with the same sight word.
The poems that we would be working on were different every week. I looked into the poem folder and its contents were strikingly similar to the ones that I was used to working on in elementary schools. These poems consisted of Mary had a little lamb, The Itsy Bitsy Spider, Humpty Dumpty, Winter Snow, and much more. On the back of these poems there were questions that the teacher could ask the students, some of the common questions that were there were: which sentence has the fewest amount of words, which has the longest amount of words, how many words have a double "L", and which words rhyme.
Our advisor then talked to me about "identification" where the students had to identify which word didn't belong with a group of other words. An example of this would be : cat, sat, bat, and sun. The word that wouldn't belong would be sun because the other words all have the ending sound of "at". She explained to me that I would be working on the same skills with them every week, so I'd first start with the "sight word game" then move onto the poem, and if time permitted it, would finish with the identification exercises. She also told me that since it was our first time meeting the students, that today should be laid back and that we should try to get to know our students as best we can.
I admit that I was a little nervous when I was to first meet the kids, I wanted them to like me and I was hoping that they wouldn't give me too much of a hard time. I was lucky enough to be placed in the same classroom as another girl from our volunteer group. She would be using the table next to mine, but was assigned three girls. I was assigned to one girl and two boys (one of which was missing so we got started without him) I got to know the kids, we exchanged names, I told them how to pronounce mine (which they had fun with because my name was so different), I asked them their interests and told them what I was there for.
After about 10 minutes of introductions, I started with my first lesson: the "sight word game". At first the kids were very excited about it, but soon after they tired of the game and begged me to move onto the poem. The students started to become very antsy, getting up to get a drink from the bublar and going to the bathroom. I feared that I had lost total control of the situation until I mentioned to them that if they behaved I would give them each a feather. This got them to quiet down a bit, but they were still moving around in the chairs and looking around the room. During the middle of our "sight word game" a student came and sat down at our table. I asked him if he was the boy that was supposed to be in my group but he didn't respond, I then asked the other two children in the group if he was the boy that was missing, but they said that he was not. I asked him one more time if he was in the right spot, if he was here for the "reading buddies" program but he sat mute. So I proceeded to play the sight word game without him and he just sat there (I later found out that this was the boy in question and felt extremely bad about it, but my advisor told me not to worry about it because he should have spoken up).
After the sight word game we moved on to the poem. The poem that I had with me was Humpty Dumpty, so we read the poem together. The young girl in my group (Cindy) seemed a bit lost when reading it, so I took some time and asked the boy (Tom) to not answer any questions that I asked her. I told her to read each sentence aloud, and helped her with the words that she was stuck on. After she had gotten through the whole poem, I asked them the questions that were placed on the back of the sheet. Before I knew it, time was up and I returned the kids to their classrooms. I didn't give them feathers, because even after I asked them to behave and to listen to me they wouldn't cooperate. So I told them that next week if they were well behaved I would give them each a feather.
When I got to the room, I filled out the proper documents. I wrote down what I worked on with them, along with some comments I had for each of the kids. I wrote that Cindy had a lot of energy and wouldn't sit still, she kept getting up to get a drink and wouldn't concentrate on the work. Tom was a bit better, he listened when I would repremand him but kept looking around the room for more "interesting" things to do.
After this, I signed out at the main office and made my way back to RIC.
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