My Fifth Visit

March 19 was my fifth visit to my elementary school and I was excited to go. Since last week went good, I knew this week would be better. Like always I was at the school at 915 and I went up to the school and rang the buzzer. When I went into the office to sign myself in, I hear the principal yelling at a student for putting his class’s attendance in the wrong spot. I found that maybe the principal should have had a different approach with the student because of the little mistake the boy made. When I walked down to my kindergarten classroom I saw Ms. W but, she was talking to someone, so I decided that I would talk to her about last week when she would come see us in the class. When I went to the classroom the other volunteer looked like she just got there. As usual she and I sat down and she was telling me that she wanted to talk to Ms. W about having more challenging work for the first graders. 10 o’clock rolled around and it was time for me to go to my students.
As usual I always start with segmenting. I only segmented with them for 10 minutes because they were really getting through the words fast. Transitioning over from segmenting to the game, Ms. W came over and she asked if everything was alright with the students from kindergarten and first grade. I told her that I felt that the kids need to have more challenging stuff and come to find out she just put new things in there and she said that the segmenting of words could stop because she said they already know that stuff.I was happy to hear that and after talking to her. I went back to playing a game with the kindergartners and they were really getting the hang of pointing out which words were real or nonsense words which I felt that next week I needed to introduce a new game to them. After the game we read a book called the tin man and they were reading wonderfully. All of the kids were following along with their fingers and they were pausing at each punctuation. At the end of the session I told them that they did a good job and to keep up the good work.
It was time to go to my first grade class and I wanted to know what Ms. W put into the box for me to teach the kids. When I walked in the kids were happy and I noticed that they did not have snacks so maybe they will be calmer than if they were to have snacks. As I brought the box over to the table I noticed that the things she had prepared for me were games. The games that were there seemed more challenging. I happened to be right these games really challenged them and they were have trouble with oy, oi, and ow sounds because they basically sound the same. The first game was having each of the kids having what looked like a bingo card in front of them and each student told another student the word and they had to place a counter on the square containing the sounds that were in the word. This gave them some trouble because some of the sounds sounded like other sounds and that where some students messed up a little but I feel that if they get the hang of it, they will be able to become more equipped with it. The second game we played was having the students make up words that have a vowel and the letter r. What they had to do was thinking of words that could fit with the vowel and the letter r. It seemed that they were struggling so I decided give them a letter and they could finish the rest of the word. This game was also challenging because it seemed hard for them to put letters together to come up with words. I feel that their favorite part of the game was writing the final word into stars on the other piece of paper. Once time was up both of the girl were very happy and they both ran up and gave me a hug. They said they were excited for next week and then they left for lunch and I was ready to leave.
Overall it was a good day and I was happy with everything except for the student that the principal was yelling at. It really bugged me when I left because he should have had a different approach with the student. I am excited for next time and I enjoy every moment I have at that school.