My Second Visit...

On Tuesday morning, I made my way to Providence. This would be my second visit and my nerves had calmed down a little. Luckily, I didn't get lost and was able to find my way to the parking lot and find a close spot to the school. I remembered to ring the doorbell and easily made my way into the office where I signed in with the VIPS Volunteer Binder. After I signed in I sat on a bench in the hallway with 3 other volunteers. We were all unsure on whether we were supposed to go directly to our reading coach, Mrs. Smith's, room or to wait for her to come get us. We decided to wait for the two other volunteers and then at 9:35 made our way to Mrs. Smith's room.
When we arrived in her room, we all sat around a table. She gave us our room assignments...three would be in room 14 and the other three would be in room 24. We were then given a folder with our three students file. In this file was their pre-test (to see what level of phonemic awareness) and results, their log of what activity they do each week, and their behavior chart where the other tutors write down any behavioral issues they had. Finally, it was 10:05 and we all made our way down the hall to our designated classrooms.
The other volunteers and I slowly walked in room 14 feeling a little nervous. However, those nerves went away when we were greeted with friendly kindergarten students who were so excited to see us. I found my three students sitting at a table by the window. The hardest thing about the day was trying to fit in those tiny chairs at that tiny table. Across from me at this table, were two boys and one girl. From what I could tell, the girl and one of the boys was black and the other boy was asian. Let's call them Sarah, Billy, and Jared. I went around the table and asked them their name and age and told them my name and age. They were all so enthusiastic and happy, which made me even more comfortable.
The first thing we did was read the poem "Mary had a Little Lamb," they listened intently and were ready to do the activities that went along with it. I asked them things like "what would you do if a lamb was at school?" and "where is a lamb suppose to be?"; Sarah said she would try to ride the lamb, but then changed her mind because she didn't want to hurt it. Billy said he would feed it and Jared said he would ride it all around school. There answers made me laugh, but I was happy to see that they were comfortable and ready to answer any questions. Then we did a rhyming activity with the words in the poem and they did very well with choosing which words rhymed and which didn't when I said them aloud. The final activity we did was the sight word game. I chose 6 words (ex. funny, for, and) and gave each a number. One at a time, the student would role the dice and which ever number they got they would create a sentence with the corresponding word. All of the students struggled a little with putting the words into sentences, but as the game went on and I helped them Sarah, Billy, and Jared understood a little better on how to make a sentence with the words. I was really happy with how they did for their first day with me.
After we met with our students for 35 minutes we returned to Mrs. Smith's room to fill our paperwork and discuss how our first day went. It was nice to hear the other volunteers experiences as well. I'm excited to go back and see what kind of progress my three students will be making over the next few weeks.