1st Place Winner
Post 1:
听听 听This week, in my Reading Partners session at Samuels Elementary, I was assigned to a new buddy. My old buddy's homeroom teacher had a scheduling conflict for his slots, so he got moved to Thursday sessions, whereas I'm only available on Wednesday mornings. My new buddy's name is Jayceon, or Jay for short. Similar to my last buddy, Jay is in third grade and is 8 years old. However, he is a bit further behind in his literacy level. After gauging his reading level during this preliminary session, our main goals with him will be building up the foundations of sounding out letters and improving fluency and comprehension skills. He also seems to struggle a lot with mixing up letters, especially p and d, and d and b, so we will work on that as well. Something Jayceon has done a good job with so far is relating certain concepts from the reading or explanations of vocabulary words into ideas that he can apply to his own life in order to increase his understanding. In terms of addressing these strengths and struggles during session, I think that using his strengths as a framework to address his reading struggles could be helpful. For instance, I might try equating certain letter sounds to words that are familiar to him, which might involve his interests like basketball or Legos. However, if anyone has any advice on strategies for how I can help Jay with his mixing of letters like p, d, and b, that would be greatly appreciated!听
Post 2:听
听听 听Being a part of Reading Partners at Samuels Elementary this semester has been an incredibly rewarding experience. While it has been tough some days to make the early morning commute from Broomfield to Denver, it was always so worth it when I saw my little buddy learning and making new connections from the previous week. It was incredible watching Jay light up whenever he grasped new concepts like tricky vocabulary words or letter combinations. It was also super rewarding to hear him talk about how much he loves reading now and how he feels safe with us (Iris, my volunteer coordinator, and me). Honestly, there really weren't any major concerns. While Jay is still trying to catch up to a third-grade reading level and still struggles with literacy, he has improved drastically over the past few months and seems like he will continue improving. Focus can initially be hard for him, but once we start reading, he's such a pleasure to work with. He does a great job with breaking down letter sounds and shapes, and correcting his mistakes. With that, I've found that breaking down sentences and words and separating them from the rest of the text has been a very helpful tutoring tool. Also, I've found that choosing stories that are relatable and exciting to him are much more likely to keep him engaged in the lesson. Overall, I've had a wonderful experience with my buddy and with this program. I feel like I've learned just as much from my buddy as he did from me. I am currently pursuing my teaching license and will hopefully begin teaching ELA shortly after I graduate in May, so this experience has been really helpful in providing some valuable insight and approaches toward the teaching process. It also taught me to really be perceptive toward the student's needs and experiences, as something that helps me understand the English language might not have the same resonance for them, or vice versa.
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