Eighth Visit

April 16 was my Eighth visit to my elementary school. Today was going to be different because instead of showing up at the usual 930, I had to be at the school at 9. When I arrived at the school around 850, I noticed that a lot of the kids were arriving at school. I noticed that some of the younger kids were bringing in food, but I was not sure what was going on. After I signed in at the office, I walked down to my classroom and saw that Mrs. B was not there yet, so I waited until she got there. When she came to the class, I noticed that she had a whole bunch of food with her. As everything got settled down, kids from all different grade levels were bringing food in because there was a bake sale that would be taking place. Mrs. B was telling me that the kindergarten and first graders are taking a field trip to the zoo and they have to come up with money for the buses because the admission is free for them. She was telling me that they raised enough money for the buses but they were going to try and raise more money for them to have lunch at the zoo. She was telling me that people are even donating water for the kids to have the whole day and Mrs. B is even going to just buy her class little back packs to put their water in and other things. Once 930 rolled around, it was time for me to prepare on what I would be doing with the kids. I decided this week I would play a new game with them because the other games were getting repetitive and do some reading and listening exercises.
It was time for intervention and it was time for me to tutor my three girls. I decided that I would play a new game where you would have 3 words on one side of the card and on the other half there would be a letter and they would have to figure out which letter would replace the first or last letter of the word. This game challenged them because they did not know which letter to change but once they got the hang of things, they seemed to get the hang of things. I figured that this would help them in finding new words and being able to change from one word to another. After we did that I decided to go back and read a little booklet called the tin man. I remember the week before; one girl was just basically shouting out words and not following the text. Before we began reading I decided to have her move next to me because she gets distracted by the other girls easily. She got mad that she had to move, but I was hoping that it would not affect her. As the other girls were reading, I noticed that the girl that was sitting next to me was still shouting the words. I felt frustrated because she was still not doing what I told her to do. Once I talked to her about moving on to the listening exercise that she enjoyed last time, she got a little bit better at the reading. That whole time that she was reading I was thinking of what I should do whether to tell the teacher or to just forget about it. After reading we did a listening exercise. It was an exercise that we had done the previous week, but instead of having them put together the same poem I had done one, two buckle my shoe. As we were doing this, kids in other groups kept singing it and were the cutest thing. Once this was over, Mrs. B gave me my disposition form and told me that the girl I had in my group has not been doing work lately and she is working on getting her to focus more.
When I walked in my first grade classroom I noticed that the kids were very rowdy. The teacher was trying to control them but it was not working. She seemed relieved when it was time for intervention. I decided that I would do the exercises that the teacher said I could use from her personal pile. I decided that I would play a game where you blend words together. What they had to do was listen to me say the word and point to the beginning sounds that would appear in a milkshake picture. They seemed to know a lot of what is going on and they really understood blending words. I noticed that this game took 20 minutes because there had been a numerous amount of words that they had to figure out the sound too. After that I decided to finish up the game we started last time with having them figure out words, given the middle letters. They really came up with words that I would have never thought they would come up with. I was very surprised with what was being said out of their mouths or how they thought of the words. The whole time I was tutoring the kids, all I kept thinking about was when I first walked into the class. Most of the kids in the classroom are Hispanic and the teacher is white. For the kids to control the class over the white teacher I related this to Delpit and Johnson. I related that to Delpit because of the whole cultural of power and it ironic because Delpit was talking about how the blacks do not have the cultural of power but in this classroom they do over the white teacher. I also related it to Johnson because Johnson was talking about how whites are in a way superior but in this situation that is not the case.
Although I do not have intervention next time, I feel like it’s time for me to have a break from everything. It will be a sad thing when I only have two more visits at my school. I cannot wait to go to my ninth visit and doing intervention with them.