Learn & Serve 4

Today was another short day at Learn & Serve. I signed in and walked to the Computer Lab. Mrs. Capatosto had me cut out vocabulary words and stick them into a bag to which I would label. I also checked the scores of the students to the Fast ForWord program. We check their scores every time they play the program.
When we got back to the classroom, Mrs. Capatosto asked me to take a select group of students into the hallway. There, they worked on a worksheet practicing their handwriting of the letter “a” or “o”. These students tend to write sloppy, and Mrs. Capatosto wants them to write these letters correctly now rather than learn later. Outside of the classroom, there is a big table with chairs and a chalkboard for any teacher who wants to teach a small group of students in the hallway. I love this idea, but in order to do this, I would make sure I had another teacher or aide in the classroom watching the rest of the students. Working with this group was fun because I had the control to tell them whether they needed to do a line of letters over again; the students respected me enough to listen when I told them this too. When these students finished, we went back into the classroom to find the rest of the class involved in partner or independent reading. Mrs. Capatosto asked a student to read their books to me, so we went into the hallway. This student had much difficulty reading their books, and I wondered how much the students had actually read the story before, since these books were supposed to be repeatedly read. I helped the student sound out words he did not know, and at times he expected me to just tell him the word. After reading two books, we headed back in the classroom, and I left to go sign out.