Group Reading

Date: 24 March 2007
Children: 9/11 (S and Az absent)
Volunteers: Dh, YJ, K, A & myself

I was suffering from a bout of cold and was sneezing today and hence decided against spreading my germs to the children by the regular story reading session. Instead, we broke up into groups after attendance taking. To make things more interesting, I told the children to "chope" or select their favourite volunteer to see which of the children will flock to which volunteer.

It was interesting to see that the girls went for K and some for A and YJ. At their age of 7-8 the girls preferred female volunteers while the boys were indifferent. After getting the volunteers adn children sorted out into groups, I took on one of the boys R while Dh took on YZ.

As this was the first time that I taught R on a one-to-one basis. I broke the ice with him by getting him to share about where he stayed, which school he went to and who brought him to kidsREAD class every Saturday.

During story reading sessions, R was mostly quiet as he was very shy. I was initially concerned about whether he could follow the class but this session made me realise that his initial non-participating was more due to shyness than any learning disability. I got him started on one of the books, I realised his reading ability was reasonable for a 7 year old and he could generally understand what I was saying.

Some of the girls who were advanced readers raced through 6-7 books with their volunteers! I did not know whether they were bluffing me when they told me they read so many books but I would not be surprised as some of the girls' reading abilities exceeded their age requirement.

We wrapped up the session with hangman and the children are by now very familiar with the concept of vowels and letters. I realised however that some of them still do not know how to tell time and they could be a topic to explore for the younger children.

It was an interesting session although my efficiency was affected somewhat by the cold bug.

Till the next session on 31 March 2007.