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.