How to Make Pinatas

Date: 7 April 2007
Volunteers: Dh, A, YJ, K, myself
Children: 7/10 (C, Z, A) S withdraw from the program

The class has become smaller with 10 children now instead of 9. Three of the munchkins were absent Z ("got something on" as she was attending the 12.30 pm mathematics tuition class next door), C (chicken pox) and A (did not turn up). The volunteer-student ratio now is very good with 5 volunteers to 10 children. Almost 2:1. Hmmmm... I should start thinking of doing more small-group work with the volunteers and children. :-)

An NIE trainee was with us (Au) who dropped by to film some of our activities during the class. It was related to her NIE project on kidsREAD though I did not have time to ask how about the details of her research except for her to send us a copy of the video.

The feedback from Au was that the class was well-behaved. That was certainly good to hear. :-) Though one or two of the girls are very outspoken and familiar to the point of being highly opinionated about the stories and how the class was conducted. E.g. if there were no games they would pout and comment negatively about the lack of such "fun" activities. Oh well, you cannot please everyone....hahah..

I read with the class as a big group another Judy Ling book on How to Make Pinatas (they are pronounced as "Pin-yah-ta"). Did not take any pictures of the book but it is also an attractive book which can be combined into a craft lesson if time permits. After that, we had small-group reading again this time with me tutoring J one-to-one. She is still not too consistent in her reading and word recognition but I think I found out what some of the problems were. Her eyes are not focussing on the words in a book in sequence and hence sometimes read words that were totally not related to what was in print. I am getting her to track the words using her fingers and for her eyes to track her fingers to the words. Let's see if this works out next week as I will work with her again.

In the meantime, have a great week one and all and mental note to myself to get a 2IC for older class as I will need to build up the capabilities of our talented and warm-hearted volunteers.

K is for kidsREAD!