My Sixth Visit...

Today was my sixth visit to the elementary school. It was rainy so I ran to the door and waited with a parent who was going into the school for what seemed like forever. The man had to ring the doorbell three times. Eventually we made it in and I signed into the office and made my way to Mrs. Smith's room. However, today I found out that Mrs. Smith was a teacher assistant and the real literacy coach, Mrs. Del, was out on maternity leave. So it was a bit of a change, but Mrs. Smith came into to talk to us too. Mrs. Del explained what we should be doing and how she is really happy that we come because it is so helpful to the students. We then picked up our folders and materials and made it to our classrooms.

When we go to room 14, the students were sitting on the carpet singing some song about the 13 colonies. When the teacher saw us,she sent the kids to their intervention tables. Billy, Sarah, and Jared were all there and excited to see me. We started with a poem, "One, Two, Three, Four, Five," which they all enjoyed. We did some activities with the poem, but they were all excited about starting the new activity we hadn't done yet. Starting this week, we are able to an activity based on the skill level of the students. Billy, Sarah, and Jared are on the Identification/Categorization skill. We did the activity "three-in-a-row" which they all enjoyed. One at a time, each student would pick up a square paper that had a picture on it. They would then identify the picture (ex. bear) and give the beginning sound of the word (say the sound of "b"). It the student said the letter as well that was great, but the main thing was to get them to recognize the sound and the beginning sound at that. After we played three rounds of that we did the sight word game. Each week, the students are getting better and better with there sentences. Furthermore, they did very well recognizing the beginning sounds and what they are. Finally, it was 10:35 and time to go.

As I walked back to Mrs. Smith's/Mrs. Del's room students were all around the halls walking to their classes or a special. When I got to the room, I filled out the behavior and log sheets and put my materials away. The other volunteers came back soon after and we all discussed what we did with our students and how they behaved. Soon it was 11:00 and we made our way to the parking lot. Next week, I'm excited to go back and do another activity and read either "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" or "Humpty Dumpty" per request of Jared, Billy, and Sarah.