Change for Kids

My students did not want to cooperate with me on Friday. I think we have the nice weather to thank for their behavior. They just wanted to go play outside. We did get some work accomplished. They did their sight words and completed two worksheets. After that, I assigned each of them a word to look for in a newspaper or magazine. I hope that next week we will be able to get more work done. Overall, I see their improvement and that’s what really counts.

There have been so many changes in the past couple of weeks. I lost one student because he was in the hospital. Thankfully all is well. The other student I started to work with now works with Stephen. I was able to pick up another girl. Hopefully I’m able to stick with her throughout the semester. 

Today started out as a normal day with the routined site words and phonics worksheets. However, we tried a few things differently as well. Each student had a newspaper or magazine, looked for site words in the articles, and cut and pasted them onto paper. Then I played a flashcard game with my students where they each had to read a word on a card and give me a sentence, each of which got them a point. Finally, all of our students played a group matching game where they had to overturn two cards, match them, and say the word. It was an unusually long day, but putting in the extra time was worth it so see the children having more fun.

So I apparently lost my kid again! He was making such a big improvement, it’s unbelievable, but when I went to get him his teacher said he moved. She did say anything else and just ushered me out the room. Just ridiculous! So I got another kid, but I am not really sure if he even belongs in the program. We went over everything to near perfection and then did some of his work. He is a quick learner and very smart. His only problem is that he is a little quiet and shy…but I mean is it really a big problem? I think he reads pretty well. I don’t know. I guess we’ll see what happens next week.

So we’re finally back…after such a longgggggg break. I was a little anxious going back because I knew it had been a long time and I was worried that my tutee may have forgotten a lot of the work. However, how wrong was I! Not only did he remember the words we went over last year, but he improved! I was so happy to see that, it really made my day to know that this work is not in vain and these kids are really coming out with something. After going over the sight words we did some little worksheets…very dull, he ran through that in two seconds. So I let him pick out a book to read. He read it and then we drew pictures and made up a few sentences for it. That was around the time Mr. Medina et al came so my tutee was a little nervous but he pulled through. After they left we finished up what we were drawing and showed each other. He actually helped me with mine so I let him keep that for himself and I took the other one to put in his folder. I’m really happy that there was improvement, it makes these sessions ever more worthwhile. I should be getting one more child next week, hopefully things continue to get better

I was definitely eager and excited to go back to the school this new year. I knew the girls would get happy to see me. It feels good knowing that they appreciate and enjoy the time we share together. This week I only tutored one girl though, because the other girl I had is being tutored on Wednesdays now. I won’t have her anymore. I was a little down about this, since we already had an established relationship, but on the other hand it means that one more child can get my help. I went over the sight words with her and I was very pleased that she got most of them correct. After, I was reading a story and this was when our advisors from school visited us. I noticed the change in my girl immediately. She got shy and put her head down. She asked who these people were, so I explained to her. She was a bit uncomfortable, so I told her that she shouldn’t be shy, because they just wanted to say hi and were nice people. After this she changed her attitude and wasn’t afraid to talk to them. I liked the fact that our advisors came because I feel it made the kids feel special and important. There are people who care about their learning, apart from their teacher or even myself. She surprised me when she asked for my help in her spelling. I remember once before, it was as if she didn’t want to write about the story. She was “rebellious” because she wrote something wrong and I told her it was incorrect. She gave up then and I had to persuade her to write about the story, but this time it was different. She told me that she wasn’t sure and needed my help. She wrote most of the two sentences on her own sounding out the letters.

I was very impressed with my students today. I haven’t seen them in over a month, but they were still able to get through most of the “sight words” without much difficulty. I am really starting to see the improvement. They know all the words on the short lost, so I will only focus on the long high frequency word list. After that they did three worksheet rather quickly. Then we took turns reading “A Baby Sister for Frances.” I also noticed that their reading skills are improving. After we finished reading the story, my students drew pictures of their favorite scenes and wrote a few sentences about their pictures.

The last tutoring session that I had with my students was three weeks ago. When I went that time, I went over the “sight” words with them as usual. They wanted to go over them quickly so that they could get to storytelling. When I told them, though, that they had to go over the “sight” words every week, they seemed disappointed. Additionally, I told them that we would have to spend more time on the “sight” words every week if they forgot more and more words each week. Therefore, they cooperated more with me afterwards. It seemed to me that they were more eager about the storytelling. After we went over the “sight” words, I had them work on worksheets in which they had to fill in the word blanks in sentences with the proper pronouns. Lastly, I had them read a book to me. Originally, I suggested to them that one of them should read the entire book first and then the other one would read the entire book afterwards. They both refused to do that. So, I had them alternate reading to me with every other page. Overall, I think that it is great that my students seem so excited about storytelling. This shows that they have a strong interest in reading and are eager to improve.

My students and I started off session 5 as we normally would by going over the ‘site’ words and doing some worksheets to practice using some of the troublesome words. I definitely see improvement in that they can recognize the words faster, but I would still really like to work with them on writing sentences. To help improve their writing skills, we all took turns reading “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell,” which they really enjoyed. Taking turns to read also forced all of us to listen to one another, which is exactly what they need to do for their standardized test coming up. When we were done, we all chose our favorite parts of the book and wrote a few sentences on why we liked it so much. Both of my students had really great ideas, but had some trouble putting it on paper. I helped them with some spelling, but other than that they did great. When we were done, we all drew pictures of our favorite parts.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/changeforkids/sets/72157622817711367/show/

I saw a huge improvement this week. My students were able to recognize all the words on the short high frequency word list. Now that they are familiar with that list we can work exclusively with the longer list. My students also completed two worksheets this week. They were so excited to do the worksheets that they made some mistakes, but they were able to correct these mistakes on their own. After we did the worksheets they read a book to me. Usually I read to them, but we decided to do things differently this week. They read to me without much difficulty. I was very impressed with them. At the end of the session I gave them stickers for all their hard work.