Spelling Bee

Date: 3 March 2007
Volunteers: K, YJ, A and Myself
Class: 8/11 (C, J, LM absent)

The first drawer of the rickety old steel cabinet storing our kidsREAD books got stuck and hence I was unable to access the large print Judy Ling books for the group reading.

I started the class with spelling as a warm-up activity as some of the children had not arrived yet at 11.30 a.m. We did team-spelling for a while and then went straight into small group reading of 4 groups each. K took the 2 boys (S, R), A taught HL and Z, YJ taught YZ and A while I took S and J. (Sorry, abbreviations are used for the childrens' names as a safety precaution. We wouldn't want strangers turning up at our centre and looking for specific children. As we all know, the net can be dangerous!)

The books used were part of the 48 books identified by NLB as those recommended to be used in the kidsREAD classes. Some titles included, "If You Give a Pig a Pancake" (Laura Numeroff), "That's What Friends Are For" and so on.

The children are improving a bit. Even I could detect a slight improvement in J as she tries to read more words. I would have to be more deliberate in my group reading allocations as I learnt during the kidsREAD training by NLB later on the day about trying to provide some consistency in the children's kidsREAD volunteer so that the environment is less volatile for them. Children who may not have a stable family environment would benefit for having the same volunteers teaching them most days. This would also help in my getting feedback from the tutors about the children's performance periodically. More about the training in another post.