Sixth Visit

Today I went to my elementary school. I arrived at 9:00 with my friend and went to the front office to sign into the VIP’s book. We signed in and then I went to my classroom. When I got to the classroom the kids were all gathered on the front carpet and the teacher was reading a book to them. Some of the kids started to misbehave and the teacher sent them to their desk to write out the rules that they broke. In the front of the classroom the teacher has a list of the rules on a piece of paper that she hangs up. Whenever the students break a rule repeatedly they must write the rule or rules that they broke a certain amount of times.
The teacher finished reading the book and the students returned to their desk. They had enough time to each pick out their own book and to read for a little while on their own. Some kids decided to run around the classroom instead and play with each other. The teacher was setting up things for the day so she didn’t say anything to the students. At 9:30 the other teacher from a different classroom came to take her kids and some other kids came into my classroom.
I took some of my kids that I would be working with and I was with three of them for the first session. They all wanted to play Candy Land but that is the game we usually play first so I told them we had to either play one round of Bingo or Go Fish before we could play Candy Land. They choose to play Bingo. They spent most of the time fighting with each other and moving the markers on each other’s mats. They usually yell at each other and claim that someone is cheating which isn’t possible, because you work on your own and either had the word or not.
The kids do not seem to make much progress. The words on the Bingo mat are words like mop and mope, pin and pine, and Tim and time. It is trying to teach the kids how to distinguish the words from each other. Every week I teach the kids hints of how to remember the words, but they can never remember.
After this group I received my second group of kids. I played Go Fish with them and they read the words well. I was working with two kids, but the other kids in the class who I never work with wanted to play too. I explained to them that I was only working with these two students, but they would not leave the table that we were working at. After a few minutes, they finally left and went to work on their own work. It had is hard to play Go Fish with my two kids, because one of them does not speak at all. He will only whisper if that. Go Fish requires talking to he points to the person he wants to ask and then shows the card. I have been trying to work on getting him to speak or even whisper more, because I know he can read, but he won’t and I am not sure why.
Overall, this week was similar to all the other weeks I was there. We play the same games every week and the students do not seem to make much progress. I hope that in time they will be able to learn the words we go over weekly and improve on their reading skills. I also hope that my student who does not speak will learn to talk more or even whisper more which will be some progress for him.