Sixth Visit

March 26 was my sixth visit to my elementary school. When I got to the school I noticed that the other volunteer that I worked with was not there. I went to the office at 915 and went to the classroom at 930. When I walked in the classroom Mrs. B welcomed me and the kids that I worked with were excited to see me. As always I had a half hour to prepare what I was going to do with the kids and around 945 the other volunteer comes in and she did not seem herself. She was having a bad morning and you could tell that by the expression on her face. After she told me what was wrong I noticed that in the box there was a poem game for the kids to play and it seemed like really fun. As the kids separated for intervention, the kids brought me to the corner table and it was time to begin.
As I waited for the other girl to come from next door I filled out the papers on what I would be doing with the kids today. I decided to do words in a sentence, play a game where the students say if the words are real words or nonsense words and end with some reading. As the other girl came over, I decided to play a new game that I have never played with them before. What I had to do was put the poem in front of them but individual words were scattered around and they had to put the poem together by me reading it to them. They really got the hang of things because it was poems that kids know at the age we did humpty dumpty, and one two buckle my shoe. As we did this game, the other kids in the room started to sing humpty dumpty and one two buckle my shoe. Mrs. B looked over at me and smiled which mad e me smile because the other kids were getting involved with something I was just doing with my 3 kids. Another game I played was having the kids roll a cube and then put the letters together then have the kids told me if the words are real or nonsense. Every time I play that game they always would roll the cube off of the table and this time I would make sure that would not happen. I told the kids before we would play the game that if they did not keep the cube on the table then the game would end. The kids listen to me and they really followed the rules because this was one of their favorite games. I was glad they listened to me because it showed that I had control over them and they listened to me. After we played that game, we decided to read for the last 10 minutes. This whole time that we read, two of the three girls really made an effort in following along with the words and it showed me that they really wanted to learn. One of the girls always does not want to follow along and I feel like I have to spoon feed her the words and she gets distracted easily. It was time to go and I realized that next time I would be at the school; I would try and have the one girl focus more because the other girls do a great job in following along.
It was time for me to go to first grade and the other volunteer and I walked down together. She was telling me that she just got a new student to tutor and he is hard to control. Next time she is going to try and be stricter about things because this student really did not want to do anything that she gave them to do. When I walked into the classroom I noticed that one of the girls was missing and I only got to work with the boy and the girl. When I went to put down my folder, I noticed that the little boy got my box for me and it was so cute because it just barely reached the box. When he got the box it was time for us to begin. I decided that we would play 2 games because that’s all that Ms. W put in the box for me to do on Fridays. The first games that we played was to have each kid read a word to the other one and then have the person receiving the word to put a counter on a card which contained the sounds that were in the word. Last time we played this game the kids were having trouble with the word sounds but maybe this time it would be different. Both of the kids that were there were sounding out the word, it was more like segmenting the word. This time they were more into really sounding out the word instead of just guessing the possibilities the word could be. The only thing they had trouble with was putting the counter on the right word sound. I feel like the more practice they get, the better they will get at it. After we finished that game I decided to have them play a game where they have to make up words with certain letters in it. Since we played this game last time they really were catching on to it but the letters that we did not get to last time, they struggled with it because they were fairly new to it. I have noticed with both the first graders and the kindergartners that with the more practice they get, the better they are.
It was time for me to go and it was time for the kids to go to lunch. Something that I never thought would happen between such young kids happen. After I got my log sheet signed by the teacher the girl that I had in group came up to me and told me that the boy would not give her a fruit snack because she was black and only white people could have them. I felt like this was the cultural of power because only the white people are superior and the colored are minority. I connected it to Delpit because she talks about the cultural of power and the colored being a minority. When I saw the boy I told the boy to say he was sorry to her and when he did, they both gave each other a hug and I left with good terms. As always I am excited to go back and even though there is no class next week, I can’t wait to see them again.