Jess rhymes with....

so i found out today that Norbit does not know my name... he has always just referred to me as his reading buddy. so since Mrs. Taylor was working on rhyming with her class i decided to give him the clue that my name rhymes with less and with mess. So he comes up with cress. interesting... so i said no.... it started with J. He goes... "jess, like jesse? (jess adds that there is a jesse in the class) but thats a boys name..." so i had to explain that if you spell my name the girl way theres an -ie at the end of it instead of just the -e. but it proved a point. names are gender oriented. the simplest name can be twisted and seen as strange in some contexts.
Diane's reading buddy has gathered an attitude recently as well. she had to be told a few times that she is not the boss, but reverse psychology calmed her down when Diane allowed her to take control of the word packet activity and let her tell Diane what words to change around.
my reading buddy had trouble focusing during the group observation, but he was better when we went into the hallway. we got our work done quickly so that we could play games, and like last week (i remembered what we did when Diane prompted me) when we were done, the four kids paired up and played Candy Land, although this game was much less stressful, the kids were more at peace with each other.
it was really amusing at the end, one of the girls in the class asked me if i worked at kohls in warwick... oddly specific right? well apparently she saw me at work the other day. I told her to come say hi next time she saw me because i never get visitors at work. small world isnt it.... lol... but Norbit is very excited that im going to be working with him for the rest of the year... its good when i can walk in and he gives me a big smile and a wave. also when i redid the dolch test with him he knew all of the words excluding a few up til third grade, but hes in second grade so thats fine... but i was so proud :) im doing my job... and he was proud... he kept trying to peek to see his words. he was disappointed that he missed some, so we worked on the first six he missed and he felt better when he realized that he knew a lot more then when we had first started. its a good feeling.

oops...

yeah so i was supposed to blog on the last time i met with Norbit, but i had to go to work straight from meeting with him... so i forgot until now.. and im in a really bad mood and the only thing i remember is that i asked him if he wanted me to continue meeting with him. he said he didnt want a new tutor, he said "you can stay" lol... nice.... so thats good... ill be staying on until the end of his school year... i believe diane will be for her reading buddy as well, they enjoy meeting with us so thats good... yeah.... sorry bout this...

Absolutely Normal Chaos (yeah its the name of a book)

ok... we all arrived to tutor around the same time today. four of us... and one of the other girls comes back from the room and tells us all that Mrs. Taylor is not in and the kids have all been split up around the school until she gets there around 11. So we decide to have the kids meet us at the office so that we can still meet with them for the day. The principal had the list of all the classrooms where the kids were, so she had the secreteries call them down. The lady from the VIPS program said she would meet with her kid on Friday so she left... about 2 minutes later her reading buddy came to the office... the poor thing was so confused... Norbit was absent today... so i decided to take the VIPS lady's buddy. Once we had all of our buddies, we were put in a classroom to work. We are not supposed to be left unattended with students, but the principal told us that if we wanted we could keep the door open and teachers would check on us when they walked down the hallway, which they did frequently... it was basically no different then any other day... or so we thought... the kids were absolutely nuts... they were pulled out of these classes... my buddy for the day, Kwami, was placed in a 6th grade classroom for the morning, hes in second grade. he was very quiet at first, which is understandable because it was a very confusing morning, and it didnt help that i was very unprepared for his skill level. He moved much quicker than Norbit and he was on a much more advanced reading level. he quickly became bored with my activities and we spent time going over books about science, which was really cool. he was very interested in math, so we worked on his times tables..... he can multiply through the 5's, most of the 6's, and some of the 7's and 8's... it was crazy... he became very animated and chatty once we struck an interest. he is extremely intelligent, and he was very let down that his tutor left (because of course miss latte had the brilliance to say outloud "oh... i feel so bad... she left...."). i made up the excuse that she had errands to run and that she told me to tell him that she promised she would see him on friday, he seemed much better after that. the other kids were not so well behaved. Diane had to tell her buddy repeatedly that if she did not do her work she was going back to class... Miss Latte's buddy was off the wall.... and the fourth girls buddy was on the cranky side... with their head teacher not in the building they were a whole different set of kids.... there was no control. we even walked them back to their other classrooms because we didn't trust them to not wander off. Kwami walked into the wrong classroom, and when he finally found the right door, he was in a class with kids who could have taken me on with a good fight.... it was nuts... poor little quiet kwami with the big scary kids. but yeah... he didnt seem intimidated.... he just bounced inside and sat down. lots of confusion today.... hope friday is better....

Pumpkin Muffin Pandemonium!!!

yeah so... instead of the kids doing word wizards this morning, mrs. taylor decided that they were going to bake pumpkin muffins.... it was a really good idea, and we figured it would be a lot of fun to help the kids out... what made it really amusing is that technically baking is not allowed in Fortes because the people in charge believe it takes away from reading and writing... but hell why not...

the kids with reading buddies got to go first, so of course the five kids who were privileged were more excited then anything ive ever seen, Norbit felt he needed to shoot me a huge smile and a big thumbs up... then they went to wash their hands (twice) and get the ingredients off the table... Norbit was in charge of adding the three spoons of oil... the worst episode was when Akasha tried to crack the egg, she picked it up to see if it had cracked and half of the egg white fell out on her shirt and on the floor. she managed to save the yoke though... and the batter looked like it was fine... they got to spoon it out into little ceramic pots to be baked in the cafeteria oven.

well that set the kids off. diane and i had volunteered to take on Josiah as well today because his reading buddy wasn't going to be there. you would have thought he would behaved for us, not the case... if anything he was even more off the wall. there was definately jealousy between Norbit and Akasha, at one point Akasha said to Josiah that Diane was her reading buddy, not his... much possessiveness here. Norbit and Josiah also do not play well together when they are playing games. Competition is crazy. A few times I had to grab the game pieces and have Norbit explain to me why i had stopped the game. He knew he was misbehaving, Josiah didn't care. Josiah just seemed to want to get Norbit wound up.

We're gonna clap our crazies out...... orrrr not....

holy god... maybe todays tutoring session reflected my conflict that i am currently having versus my high school friends, but today just felt absolutely insane!!! the kids were so rambunctious that the teacher actually had to come out and tell them to calm down because the classes around us were being disturbed. a few times i had to tell Norbit he needed to calm down or he would be returning to class. as promised we didnt write today much to his relief, and i had him read to me instead. also we worked on second grade candy land for the first time. he handled those words better than he handled the first grade words... it was rather amusing... we also attempted to work on the "nonsense words fluency" matching game that we were given... only problem being the kids could see right through the copies of the cards and could find the matches wayyyy too easily. so i have to fix that today after im done blogging...

it was also rather amusing that the infamous miss latte was talking to another of the girls in the program, saying that their 15 hours were done, so they were done.... and i felt i should inform them that if they read their packets carefully, the reading buddies program was 25 hours of community serice... to which she responded with "well you must be confused, the school of ed is 25 hours..." like i dont know what im talking about.... so of course she checked her packet, and VOILA!!! 25 HOURS!!! dumb blond... but instead of doing the right thing and sticking with it with her reading buddy, she instead says to the other girl "do you think we could finish our hours somewhere else?" like what the hell are they here for?? obviously they are not here to help the students, they are here to help themselves, which i find truly disgusting... if you dont want to help kids learn, then why the hell are you in an education program??? Diane and I are the only ones who don't run out the door on our buddies after our time is up, we hang around to talk to mrs taylor so that we can let her know the areas that we can see improvement in, and also to get feedback on how they are improving in class... we are also (most likely) the only ones who are genuinely interested in staying on after our 25 hours are done so that we can continue to help our buddies... we have bonds with them... obviously better ones then the other tutors have... im sorry.... im very aggravated with crap like this... its absolutely rediculous.... and if you havent seen this about me before... dang... you gotta start reading more!!!

Goodness Gasseous....

ok so let me just start with the fact that my reading buddy did nothing but fart while he did his work today.... ok now that that is out of my system... i can talk about everything else...

i was very pleased when i came in today and Norbit had the "Word Watcher" symbol next to his name and another word on the board... which basically means hes used 6 words!!! i was so excited!!! then the kids did this thing where the teacher put on a cd with sing-a-long songs for a big book... but the song was weird... it was called "Loud Blows the Wind", sung to the tune of "Pop Goes the Weasel". Basically the task was to identify all of the long "o" sounds in the book, given that they had to find the "oa" and "ow" sounds.

Once we got the reading buddies outside, I found that Norbit was in a very good mood, and he was wide awake, which was a big change from last week when he was constantly tired. We did the cube activity again, and because the paper cube had withstood two uses, i promised him he could crush the cube when we were done. He really must have wanted to stomp on the cube cuz he did his assignment in under 5 minutes.... and i told him to take his time. After he did his words out and wrote his sentances, we worked on the word packet thing... he aced A21 so we moved onto A22 right away. he stumbled a few times but i think it was more because he wanted to move onto another activity... stay on one thing too long and he gets bored...

i also told him that if he aced all the words in the first grade candy land (and didnt cheat) that we would attempt to do the second grade candy land on friday... he didnt cheat for the first game and tried so hard not to cheat on the second game that i let him cheat on the third game... by that time we had 5 minutes left so we just played with the colors anyway.

don't know what else there is to say.... i had a comment about something that happened in class but i didnt get a chance to write it down before going with our buddies, and now ive forgotten... yeah... so that didnt work....

A missed post

Yesterday was sorta crazy in that I went from tutoring to work to bowling... and when I got home at 11:30 I forgot to post on my blog... but I'll do it now I suppose. The classroom observation went well.... they were doing their "word wizard" words, and I was very excited that Norbit had four words on the board!!!! He got two more from the time I last saw him... which is awesome. The class then read a book and made a lost of the long e words that they could find... under the categories of "ee" and "ea"... they did really well, but some of them took the easy way out and used "leaves" after someone had already put "leave" and just argued that "leave" did not have an s on the end. It was rather amusing actually. Then the kids were given a word search to do on veterans day... which was really distracting for the tutors because the kids only wanted to do that... it was like a game to them.

The kids were absolutely evil... we don't know if it was because they have a long weekend, or what the deal was... but everybody seemed to be catching flack from the kids.... I got a lot of "I don't want to do that"... and it wasn't because Norbit was tired today... he was wide awake... one of the other kids Josaiah.... (again, not a real name but I couldn't think of any more from the movie...) was so hyper he was like that freakin' crazy squirrel in "Over the Hedge"..... it was a little bit like this.... sodoyouwantmetogetyouatimercuziknowwheretheyareandillgetoneandyoucanhavethisblueoneandhereillshowyouhowtoworkitohyouhavecoloredpencislwowcaniborrowonecanicanicani???
yeah it was a little like that.
I had to make Norbit understand that for me to help him with his word search we had to get our own work done first..... which he did as fast as he could lol..... and he did it correctly too which was awesome. I had him read to me today... and he wasn't very fluent, he sounded very robotic and unsure. Something we will have to work on... its funny, they call it the Reading Buddy program, but it should be more like writing buddies... we're more encouraged to help them with their spelling and their writing of words... it was difficult.
We returned them to class after and Diane and I came to the conclusion that the reason that Friday's are so tough for us is because there are at least 6 tutors out in the hallway at a time... on Wednesdays there are only three... with so many kids and tutors out there, the mood changes from one to where they want to learn, to one where all they care about is the fact that they are all out there with friends. It is good to know that they like us coming to see them though... one kid walking down the hallway stopped to make fun of his younger brother who has a reading buddy, and Diane's buddy countered with "Yeah, well do YOU have a reading buddy? huh? tell me... I didn't think so..." it was really kind of funny to see her defend herself and the rest of us like that... it lets us know they care.

Boys Will Be Boys

Norbit was moody, he didn't want to do much and he kept insisting that he was tired. He has now reached the point where he sees me enter the classroom and he makes sure he says hi. We were observing the kids while they did their word wizard section of class... apparently they have modified the thing so that kids have a little more confidence. Norbit had a word on the board when I got there and he added another one once they had gotten started. I decided to try to encourage him to use some of his new words, and the word we chose for him to work on is "wonder"... I told him that I hoped that he would have that word on the board by the next time I came to visit. He spent a lot of time complaining so we did not get much done today, also we started work late because of an incident in the classroom...
Mrs. Taylor said something today that made me think a bit... she told the kids that the classroom "was not a democracy, it was a dictatorship" and explained what each meant... but she used it in reference to the Word Wizard thing, because some kids do not enjoy wearing the hat or the badge when they become Word Wizard. Instead of finding something else to do with the kids to make them comfortable it was basically, you're doing this whether you like it or not... there is a power there that I feel was being slightly misused... Mrs. Taylor is very nice and insightful... but that comment just irked me a bit. I feel that to force a child to do something like that is to degrade the child... and it might even be a humliating experiance for them... if this happened to me as a young child I would probably not be confident with answering questions put towards me because I would be embarrassed in the end.

Missing My Buddy :(

ok so I went to tutor Norbit today... and... he wasn't there... i'm suspecting too much candy lol...
so instead I spent my hour and a half observing and giving aid to Diane and her reading buddy Cinderella (obviously, a name change).
This of course was after observing the class, it took me seconds to realize my buddy wasn't there... and one of the other boys was trying to whisper it to me subtley when Mrs. Taylor wasn't looking. I happened to come in during the crowning of the "Word Wizard", so I took a look at the board of words that kids have used in sentances... Norbit is the only child who does not have any words at all.... that concerns me... the words are not difficult... but based on what I've seen he's probably just not paying attention. After one of the other girls had been given the wizard hat to wear for the day, the class went over the list of "rules" they had come up with with Mrs. George the reading coach... basically stating they they don't talk over each other, they don't copy each other, and they're polite when adding thier own information. Surprisingly this went very well with them until they were told to turn to the kids sitting next to them and make a prediction about what was going to happen in the book. They were only given a few minutes, but only a small fraction of that time was actually spent talking about the topic, other things popped up here there and everywhere in their conversations. They also get very confused about he concept of "shaving off thier hair"... which was one of thier stories revolved around... instead they kept saying that the main character "shaved off her head". That was interesting...
When observing Cinderella and Diane, I noticed many differences and similarities between teaching styles and learning styles, as compared to Norbit and myself. Diane tries to help Cinderella remember things by using memorable phrases, like when I told Norbit there were no "kows" in his "costume" which he remembered lol... Cinderella, unlike Norbit, was easily distracted by the kids being sent out of various classes for misbehaviour... especially once one of them started shouting "I'm the chosen one!"... hmm... too much Star Wars perhaps?
They are alike in the fact that instead of spreading out their written ideas and words onto seperate lines, they try to fit everything on the line they start with, even if they have to squash it all together. It was also hard for me to observe, especially because Cinderella wanted me to interact with them, Diane didn't mind, we get along really well, and we all communicate when we're all in the hallway tutoring. The kids all see us come in while they are doing circle time and they say hi to every tutor that they get along with... even if they're not thier own...
Kids are nicer about copying each others phrases and thoughts then they were when I was in school. If you stole another kids idea, after they had already stated it you would have gotten "that was my idea stupid!"... these kids just agree with each other... even when Nemo (another chosen name) copied Cinderella to say that his birthday is tommorow... but he couldn't tell us what tommorow was, and when asked if his birthday was in November he answered no. Cinderella could, so yes it probably is her birthday. I did enjoy watching Diane and Cinderella working together today, it gave me that chance to compare how the kids work... I really do hope that my buddy feels better on Wednesday....

Moody Little Boys...

Ok so Norbit was very moody today, I don't know if it was because of the whole "OMFG ITS HALLOWEEN!! CANDY CANDY CANDY!!!" or if he was just in a mood... not exactly a bad one... but definately a different mood. Maybe he's finally warming up to me...

We started off reading a book that I got at my local library (he didn't like any of the other four...) but I think he was bored with it... it was called Tyson the Terrible, about this big ol' dinosaur who is big and ugly and scary... it was a suggestion by the librarian, but wiht me reading it I believe he was bored. I think I'm going to try and find some of my little brother's old Magic Treehouse books in the attic and seeing if he'll like those instead, they're small chapter books, with pictures in them and they go on adventures, so maybe he'll enjoy those.

After we were done with this, we started on the Sight words Dice activity. Basically I made a paper cube and used masking tape to put 6 of his missed Dolch words on it... Then he had to roll the cube and (wow that sounds wrong... you can't really roll a cube...) write on the graph chart what world came up how many times, until one word hit six. After that I had him write the words on the back however many times they were rolled, this was a bit of an adaptation because I was stupid and didn't remember that he was supposed to write the words out when it came up, so I changed the rules a bit.

We then started on the word packet, which Norbit usually loves, but instead today he worked on one section and told me he was bored... I was surprised, another reason why I could feel he was in a mood. So instead I had him write out sentances using the words from the Dolch test that were in the Dice game. He hates writing, so I'm trying to make him a little more comfortable with it so that he will actually do his assignments. He only wanted to play Candy Land, but there was no way he was getting around doing work. He did what I asked, and then we had 15 minutes left so we played Candy Land, First Grade level because he is still having trouble with some of the words like "walk" and "every".

I am seriously debating on staying after my 25 hours are up to continue working with Norbit, he is a very well behaved kid, and he is learning the words we work on quickly. I also spoke with Diane, another tutor, and she is thinking the same thing. These kids are great to work with, and we look forward to going in to work with them...

Like one of our articles said, it's not the words, its what we do with them... or something like that to another effect... I am changing them to fit the fact that Norbit and I are working with words.

Writing Woes

So we arrived to tutor today and the class was taking a quick test on their vocabularly workbooks called Avenues. The test was split into two seperate groups: the greens were the kids who are reading on the Second Grade reading level, and the pinks and yellows were the kids who are just below reading level or who need a lot of help with their spelling and reading (Norbit being in the pink category, means he's almost at reading level). It was a bit of a confusing day it looked like; there was a new student in the class and he seemed to be having trouble understanding a lot of what was going on. After the pinks and yellows had finished thier test, they were told to finish thier writing assignments. The assignment was to make a list of safety rules for Trick or Treating. Norbit appeared to be done, but when Ms. Taylor asked him about his work, he hadn't written anything. She asked me if we could work on that together for part of our reading time.
When we got out into the hallway and were settled on our dots, I asked Martin if I could take a look at his assignment notebook. He had hardly written anything on any of the assignments throughout the first quarter! He wrote the title of the assignment and left the rest of the page blank. I asked him why he never wrote anything, to which he responded that writing "made him nervous". When asked why he was uncomfortable writing, he said that he didn't know how to spell a lot of things. So we started working on his assignment, and I set a goal to come up with 5 rules for safe candy gathering. Well the first thing he wrote down was the a rule was to dress up and get candy. So I had to explain what Ms. Taylor was looking for, and after he understood a little better it was much easier to go over simple rules like looking both ways when crossing the street, and never going out alone.
Norbit really enjoys the letter switching activity that we do, which surprises me. He "isn't good at spelling" but he does really well with changing letters of words to make new words. His big problem with spelling is that he spells things the way he hears them. When he spells costume for example, he spells it kowstom. Something that I have learned is that if I can find something catchy to say about things, kids usually remember them. So to help Norbit with his "costume problem" I told him to remember that there were no cows in his costume this year. After that he spelt the word really easily, the e on the end and the c instead of the k he caught onto very quickly. We did some high frequency suns with some of his missed Dolch words, and he actually asked if we could do more of the letter switching activity. Why not? He is comfortable doing this because he excels at it... so why not encourage him to do some more... We also played the First Grade candy land today, and he only had trouble on a few words... he cheated tremendously today though, but he was very nice... he picked one of the go back some spaces cards on purpose because he knew he was winning and told me he felt bad for me and wanted me to win. I thought that was cute. I had him laughing at me today as well, because I asked him if he understood Spanish. When he said he did, I responded in Spanish that I do not understand a lot. He looked at me and said "well you know that... you know Spanish!" After this he was much more comfortable talking to me. He goes through his assignments rather quickly, so I need to find more to do with him next week, I think I might find a short book that is at his reading level, and that will be the book that we read a little at a time each visit, so he can listen for the fluency in my own reading; this being a suggestion from Ms. Taylor, I might as well try it, he enjoys listening to me read books.

Meet Norbit

Ok, so it was rather funny that I walked into the classroom today, and immediately five kids raised their hands and said to Ms. Taylor "Raspucia's tutor is here, but she's in Florida, does she know that???" it was rather amusing... so we sat and watched as they worked with Ms. George, the reading coach... some of the kids lost interest very quickly... others jumped at every opportunity to answer a question. Some would just copy the answers others gave, so activities were retired very quickly today. They have started a new project, called "Word Wizards", where they have a book they read a few times a week, and they have to learn to use some of the bigger words in sentances, both in school and at home... the Wizard of the day has to explain the meaning of three words (those for the day being nearly, empty, and..... found)... and then has to use them in a sentance... hes allowed to wear a wizard hat but if someone asks him why (like in the hallway) he has to do the same thing... then the tutors were given Charlie Dollars because we willingly sang the "Little Teapot" song... it was mentioned in one of the books the kids were reading... (well i should say offered Charlie Dollars cuz we were never actually given them... Ms. George forgot...)
After the kids were done with their activity with the reading coach (which ran 15 minutes over into our tutoring time...) Ms. Taylor dismissed the reading buddies to meet their tutors. Norbit who had never met me before was called up on his own... which he immediately responded to with a look on his face equivalent to "Oh Crap, what have I done now??!!" I tried to smile encouragingly at him, but he just smiled back... sort of like... "why is this crazy lady smiling at me?" After Ms. Taylor was finished up with Ms. George, she introduced Norbit to me.
We began working on his words which are on a considerably higher level than Raspucia's had been, but he actually grew bored with the ones we worked on, and he admitted it to me which was good cuz I was afraid he wasn't going to talk to me. Looking past the fact that our time was shortened because of the reading coach, we got a lot accomplished. I had him start on the First Grade reading level Candy Land, and he only struggled with a few words... its just very hard to start him working on something when I don't know what he has been doing with Ms. Taylor already, I don't think she had a set strategy, because he said that he never did any of the activities like the rainbow words or the word packets. I don't quite know what I'm going to start him with next week, I'm unsure whether or not I should try bumping him up a few levels or not... it's going to be difficult.

Officially Sad :(

So Raspucia's absolute last day was today. She seemed ok when we first started working on her word stuff... but she kept zoning out every couple of minutes. Then when we were working on Candy Land again (this time by ourselves) she told me she was sad about having to leave her friends and about leaving school because "she wants to learn". so instead of pushing her to do her other assignments (which she obviously was not in the mood for) I had her do a different one. I told her to write in her notebook first on how she felt about going to Florida. she came up with words like, nice, good, family, you know... easy things... so then I told her to write about how she felt about her friends at Charles Fortes, not how she felt leaving them mind... that comes into play later... but again she used good, nice and then she went on to sad, and i will miss playing with them, and i will miss my teachers. after that i let her talk about it... she seemed to feel better after that which was good. when it was almost time for me to go and for her to go back to class, thats when she went into sudden panic mode. she doesnt want to go on the plane by herself, and she doesnt want to walk down the tunnel connecting the plane to the terminal by herself. shes worried that her aunt won't be there to pick her up on the other side... and all sorts of other things like that, which naturally a second grader should be worried about. I felt terrible though, she was leaning on me and it felt like she was nearly in tears the entire time. I tried to reassure her as best i could, and thats when she told me that i was her best friend and that she liked me cuz i did a good job as a tutor and because i helped her learn things that she didnt get before. yeah... miss cahoon almost cried... so when she finally calmed down a bit i brought her back into class and just told ms. taylor that she may need a little extra reassuring because she was very nervous about leaving. then she let Raspucia give me a hug, which made me more upset... and then she had to go back to class.... i miss her already :( she was a great kid :( ms. taylor already has another student ready to be shifted to me, which is good... but its like starting from square one... i was used to Raspucia, and she was used to me and we had formed a bond... so now i'll have to do that all over again with Norbit, the young boy that has been assigned to me (and yes, another name from the movie).

Wednesday Wednesday

Ok, so... not much difference in today's routine... observation of the class went smoothly... and then we broke off with our reading buddies. The first thing Raspucia told me this morning was that she only has one day left at her other school, and that she was upset because she wanted to stay here and to learn and be with her friends. So of course for the rest of the morning there was that black cloud over our heads... but hey we worked through it. We started work on her blends and such... which is basically changing the sounds of words and switching letters around on a letter pocket to match those sounds.... she did well on that... then we picked some more of the dolch test words and did high frequency suns... those were ok... not as much fun as the rainbow words though... we read two books from her independent reading level, and they were the most horrible books in the world... the Doo-Bee-Roo i think one was called and Phillipa and the Dragon... she had some trouble with those so i think that next time we'll just use her own teacher selected reading books. after that we joined Paquito and his tutor for a game of Candy Land, but this time because Raspucia did so well with the Primer game, we moved up to the First Grade reading level game. She did ok... got stuck on a few words like "how" and "round"... she tended to pronounce how like who and she always attached an a to the front of round... the game took up most of the time, especially with four of us playing and the two kids going up a level and having to get used to newer and harder words. At 10 they rejoined their class, and I went to ask Ms. Taylor if she knew when Raspucia's last day would be, and apparently she is getting mixed messages from at home as well... so nobody seems to be sure when exactly she'll be leaving. Ms. Taylor is keeping one of the other students in need of a tutor up to speed, so that way when Raspucia does end up moving I can help him and he won't be too far behind from missing the first few weeks with a tutor. It's just sad. Raspucia shows improvement every time I see her, and she is never any trouble... so It's really sad to see her leave :( I'm going to be depressed now...

A Disheartened World

So I went to tutor Raspucia today, and was saddened to learn that in a week or two she will be moving to Florida. She is a sweet kid, and we are rather attached even though we've only met twice now. I do not think that she really understands what is going on, because she asked me if I would be coming back every Wednesday and Friday, so of course I told her yes and almost cried cuz I was upset.

We started working on learning some of the words from the Dolch test that she missed. I had her do some "Rainbow Words", which I supplied materials for from copies made from the big ol' packet thing we were given at training, and also colored pencils which I had to have my mommy sharpen because the electric pencil sharpener and I do not get along, and I did not have time to fight with the stupid thing this morning. Basically we chose the first five words she got wrong, and she wrote them out in all of the colors of ROYGBIV, except indigo... we used light blue and dark blue... stupid indigo...

Raspucia did awesome on that, so then we chose two books and she read them aloud to me. She confused the words "get" and "got" a few times, and she also added words to the stories as she went along, but when prompted she did them correctly. so then we played candy land as a last thing...

We played last week, and a few words she had a very hard time pronouncing... she had trouble with "pretty" and "who" last week, and this week she nailed them on first sight! I was so excited, and she was very pleased with herself as she explained that she practiced them at home so she would know them for next time we played together... I was so proud!!!!

After I won that game ( not on purpose... I tried to lose, shes rather competitive at Candy Land) we joined up with another pair of reading buddies. that game was hilarious... the boy was funny as hell, trying to pick the cards he wanted by cheating and looking at them for the ice cream cone and all that good stuff. Raspucia and I were an awesome team, and seemed a bit more unified then the other pair... it was amusing... but Raspucia also did not cheat, and still ended up winning by a great margin... so it was all good...

Raspucia went back to class, and I talked with Mrs. Taylor about when she would be leaving. The exact time is uncertain... but she thinks within the next two weeks... which really sucks... Raspucia is a cute kid and shes very easy going... so once she moves, I'll be given another reading buddy... Mrs. Taylor already has a young boy picked out who needs that little extra push, so the missed time won't affect him too much... but I'm still sad.... I like my Raspucia reading buddy... :(

My First Visit to Fortes Elementary

So I was very excited to start my Reading Buddies program today. There were three of us starting on this nasty, gross, dreary, rainy, Wednesday; however the kids seemed undaunted by the weather. We were brought into the Second Grade classroom of Mrs. Taylor in room 212, where we felt like specimens under a microscope. Every child had their eyes on us as we sat in the back of the class observing for the first 30 minutes. They were very well behaved and were very intelligent on the subject of short and long vowel sounds.
Looking around the room, it seemed to be a very interactive class. Lots of artwork and stuff you know... and each desk had a personalized sack thingy attached to the chair for books and folders to go into. All of the kids in the school have their own big lockers to store things in... it was like a little junior high school.
Once they were done with their vowel sounds (or once they were done being fascinated by the three strange women in front of the class) the teacher broke them into centers and showed us where the reading buddies individual boxes were. After that we were allowed to choose our buddies. I chose a little girl named Raspucia (yes this name was taken from the movie Norbit and obviously is not the name of the actual girl). The teacher called Rodney, Justina, and Raspucia to the front and introduced them to us, their new buddies. They were all very excited, and had huge smiles on their faces. I let Raspucia decide which little dots (the mats were circular) so I called them dots, and we went out into the hallway. We started with the Dolch Test, where I could see what level of spelling and reading she was on. She did really well, but skipped the words she didn't know without much of a trial and error or sound it out stage. After we were done with that we sat around and chatted about stuff like our siblings, favorite foods, favorite colors, and about Halloween. Then we grabbed the Candy Land game (adapted for spelling) and played that. The first game I let her win, but instead of just reading the words myself for my turn, I had her read them with me, sounding out the word after she said it, then moving ahead to the color.
When it was time for us to go, the three kids were upset. They didn't express it but you could kinda tell. We returned them to their classrooms and put their things back in their boxes. I told Raspucia that I was coming back every Wednesday and Friday in the morning for the next month or so and she was very excited knowing I would be coming back on Friday. So all in all it was a good day. I can't wait to go back and really start work on some of the words that she had problems with. I am determined to get her reading up to second grade level or maybe third by the end of my community service.