My Third Visit

March 5 was my third visit to my elementary school and I was running late. I woke up late and I did not know if I would make it there on time and to top it all off I ended up sleeping at my house in Warwick the night before. I left my house around 900 and I had followed where my gps was taking me. As I looked at the time it would take me to get there I had a sigh of relief because it was only 10 minutes away from my house. I ended up getting into the school and situated around 925 and I knew next time that I had to be more responsible in waking up and getting ready and out on the road before 9. As I prepared for what I was going to do me and the other girl that was in the class room with me were talking about how things went last week and she said she is struggling with her kindergartners because they were shy kids but I told her to stay positive and that things will get better. 10 o’clock rolled around and it was time for me to go over to the table in the corner and begin tutoring the kids.
As the kids met me at the table they seemed happy to see me again and this week I decided to try and segment, read and play one of the games. The kids got better segmenting as we went on and we started to get through segmenting words faster than I thought. As I was segmenting with the kids, out of nowhere I hear the teacher’s aid stating to the kids in a stern voice that they really should know the sounds of letters by now. Hearing her really brought me out of my comfort zone but then I realized that the teacher is trying to get the kids where they are supposed to be and the kids need to really focus when they are at school. As went on tutoring the kids, I started to feel more comfortable and I started to play the game with them. The games consisted of rolling a dice with different letters on it, putting the letters together and then have the kids tell me if it’s a real word or a nonsense word. The kids really enjoyed it because they were all getting involved with the game. There was about ten minutes left with intervention and I decided to read a little bit of the book that I read with them last week. I decided to start from the beginning with the book to see if they remembered anything from last week and they really did not remember. Only one girl really focused on looking at the words and sounding them out. As time was ending, it was time for me to say goodbye and go on to the first grade class.
When I went out in the hallway, Ms. W was out there and as we walked down the hallway she asked us how the tutoring went. I had told her about the teacher yelling at the kids and she told me that it’s not so much yelling it’s more of letting the kids know that they need to understand this stuff now before it will get harder for them to learn. I was pretty excited to go to the first grade class because I really enjoyed going there last week because the kids really wanted to learn. When I walked in Ms. R welcomed me and I walked over to the three kids to begin tutoring them. As always I started to segment first and they started to fly by ever word I was throwing out at them, so I decided that it was time to actually read more of the book that we looked at last week. I was really skeptical on reading because I was not sure at what level they were at, but I decided to read. As each kid was reading they did a wonderful job. They got through half of the book and I decided to stop there because I remember Ms. W telling us that not to get too far into the book in the first week of reading. There was 10 minutes left so I decided to play a game where the kids had to look at two pictures and they had to find the letters of one word, then look at the other picture and see what letter they had to change. They continued playing the game till time was up and the kids helped me put the game away back into the envelope. I told them thank you and they all gave me hug.
The kids went back to the correct classroom and when the door opened it was the girl that I met the first week and she came running and gave me a hug. After that I said bye and met Ms. W out in the hallway. She told us she has a district meeting next week and therefore she will not be in the building. That means I am on my own.