Character Development Workshop

Date: 11 November 2006
Class Attendance: 8/9
Volunteers: YQ and friends + me

This character development workshop was organised by YQ and two of her friends who came down to help out with a combined two hour session for the classes for the older children.

They started with the reading of two stories, interspersed with doing worksheets with questions based on the story given in the books. The questions were fairly straightforward for the children but some were unable to answer them because they were not concentrating on the books. It was a larger class and given the classroom sitting arrangement, some of the children who sat further away from the volunteer who was reading to them had some problems following the story.

YQ and friends spent time preparing and selecting the two stories as well as drawing out large pictures from the stories on vanguard sheets to help the children visualise the scenes in the story books. It is gratifying to see young people being so enthusiastic about helping the children in the kidsREAD programme without any tangible reward! This is what I call passion! :-)

There were also some role playing given to the children to act out circumstances about helping a friend and so on. Some rabbit brand milk candy plus ferraro roche chocolates were given to those who participated. The children also completed the worksheet which had some english questions e.g. good ______ best, beautiful ______, _______.

Jigsaw puzzles were the last activity for the children as they were challenged to work cooperatively to help complete a picture of a teddy bear and scene of a house.

I think the children emjoyed the session though I believe the story reading was a tad too fast for some of the children to follow. I applaud the spirit and enthusiasm of YQ and friends and encouarged them to come down to help out at kidsREAD more often. :-)

Next week, 19 November - SMRT Ride and Read activity!