My First Visit...

On Tuesday, February 9, I made my first visit to an elementary school. On the drive to Providence, I was a little nervous...I was worried I would get lost and I really didn't know what to expect. As I pulled up to the school I had no idea where to park...there were cars everywhere, eventually I followed a red mini van around the school and into a parking lot. After parking, I began walking to the school and was faced with the challenge of finding the main entrance. As I made my way to the first door I found out it was locked, so I walked around half the building and found another locked door. I decided to go back to the first door and just as I got there a little girl walked in the school with the door slowly shutting behind here. I didn't get to the door in time and wound up searching for a doorbell and eventually got into the school. After making it into the school, I had no idea where to go, luckily there were 5 other volunteers, who I'm sure could tell how confused I was, that told me which door would get me into the office. As soon as I signed in, the reading coach/advisor came and brought us to her room.

When we arrived in our advisor's room the other volunteers and myself sat around a table anxiously awaiting to hear what exactly we would be doing during our 15 hours. Our advisor gave us some background information on the program and what we would be doing as reading buddies. She told us that we would be working with kindergarten students, 2-3 per volunteer. We also found out that we would be working with our students for 35 minutes and doing 3 different acitivites. First, we would be reading a poem and asking questions to the students about it. Then, we would be doing an activity that would relate to the step of phonemic awareness that our students were working on. Lastly, we would be going over sight words, which are the words that can't really be sounded out but have to be recognzied because they are so common in our language. Before and after we meet with our students we will be reviewing and filling our paper work on our students progress and how they behaved during the time we spent with them.

After we talked and fully understood what we would be doing as reading buddies, our advisor gave us a tour of the school. The school is two floors, however, we only saw the first floor because that is where the K-2 classes are located. The school was a square and well-maintained, as far as I could tell. We visited three classrooms and everyone was very welcoming. The students were excited to see new faces and one girl gave me a hug. Walking into these classrooms and feeling welcomed really helped ease my nerves and let me know that volunteering here would be fun.

My first visit was a success. I'm excited to go back and help these students learn how to recognize sounds of letters and words. Even though I didn't get to work with the students directly, I was glad to have felt welcomed and fully understand what I would be doing during my volunteer hours.