My Eighth Visit...

On the morning of my eight visit, the weather was perfect. I didn't hit too much traffic and luckily it was an easy ride to Providence (NO RAIN:]). I arrived at 9:30 on the dot and made my way to the school. Two students were going in late so they rang the doorbell and I followed in. After signing in at the office, I saw Sarah sitting outside the Principal's office. I don't know what she was waiting for, but she was so excited to see me. She asked for "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" to be the poem I read to them and I did end up picking that. I finally arrived to Mrs. Smith/Mrs. Del's room and started collecting materials. I picked "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," an activity called "Three-in-a-Row," and a pile of sight words. Mrs. Del showed us the new game they got, "Candy Land," that was modified to work with sight words. Each color a student picked would have a sight word and if they said the correct sight word, they would move ahead on the board. Unfortunately, there weren't enough so my group didn't get to try it..but we will next week.

I made my way into the classroom to three excited students. We all read the poem together and did the spider motions with it. They were so cute! We then did activities with the poem, such as pointing out rhyming words and recognizing lower case and upper case letters. Next, we went through the sight words. First I would hold up one word for each student and they would recite it back to me. Billy knows his sight words extremely well, Sarah misses only a couple, and Jared is still struggling but he recognized more than last week. After going through the pile once, I then scattered the words face down on the table. Each student picked one, two, and then three at a time on their separate turns. Then the student would read the words they picked and make a sentence with at least one sight word. I liked doing this type of activity because the students would end up challenging themselves to try and create a sentence with more than just one sight word. It was great to see how excited they got and how much better they recognized and knew their words, as well as putting them into sentences. Then, it was time for "Three-in-a-Row" which we had already done and the students were kind of bored with. In this game, one at a time a student picks up a picture, tell us what it is and its beginning sound. I think a part of the reason they're bored is because Billy, Sarah, and Jared really know their beginning sounds. They even go a step further and connect the sound with the letter. Overall, I think the students have made great progress and continue to learn more each week.

After tutoring, I made my way back to the room and met with the other volunteers. We filled out our paperwork and shared stories about our students. I'm happy I get to go to this school each week because it really is a rewarding experience. Until next week...