My Ninth Visit...

Today was my ninth visit for my service learning project. I drove the now familiar route to the school and arrived exactly at 9:30. I rang the doorbell, signed in, and made my way through the halls to the reading room. When I walked in, Mrs. Del was already explaining something so I hurried to sit down and catch up. We found out that it was evaluation week and we were going to help out and give some kindergartners their evaluations to see if they are any closer to begin the phonics program and begin to read. Mrs. Del went through the evaluation a student had already done and told us how to give one.

Unfortunately, my students were already evaluated so I was going to room 24 to evaluate two other students. The evaluation tested each student on their stage of phonemic awareness and two more after that. If the student got 4 out of 5 or higher correct on each skill, the evaluator would continue until they got 3 out of 5 or less. Some students made it through the entire evaluation which showed they were ready to begin phonics. Others, like two of mine were not even passed the first stage of phonemic awareness, which was sad to me. The first student I had was a boy named Joey. He was currently at the first stage of phonemic awareness, rhyming. He passed that section and went on to the skill of isolation. Unfortunately, he did pass that section and when we went to the next one, Identification and Categorization, he didn’t pass that either. He was trying so hard, but he just didn’t understand all of it yet. The next student I had was another boy named Juan. He also began at rhyming and made it through that and through isolation. However, he didn’t make it through identification and categorization. It was hard for me to see them not succeed when they try so hard.

After making it back to the reading room, the other volunteers spoke of how some of their students didn’t do well either. Mrs. Del said that some of the students who don’t pass many of the skills may have something else wrong that slows them down. Today’s visit was different, which I enjoyed but I would rather be with my three students. Next week I may have different students, depending on where each of my students tested. I guess we will see next week.