visit 9

Visit Number 9

Today was my ninth and final visit to the Sunnyvale Trailer Park. As I was driving to the school I was a little disappointed that I would no longer get to go in every week and work with these young children. I thought each of these kids was unique and all had many qualities for which to like them. Every visit has been a fun and successful one and the drive that these kids have to learn is incredible. It felt kind of like the last day of high school and that I wouldn’t be seeing my friends anymore, because these kids have all grown on me. As I pulled in the school I noticed that the spray paint had still not been replaced on the walls, and I was very happy for that. As I walked into the lobby I noticed a new display that contained photos of students who excelled in certain areas of academics. I thought that this was a great thing to have up in the school for all to see and would probably end up as a form of motivation for all the students to work that much harder. I stopped in and said my usual hellos to Mr. Lahey and Randy. We talked about the new display and how they had already heard kids talking about how they wanted to be up in the photos. I hope this display encourages all the kids to work harder in school which will help keep them on the right path down the road. I then went and spoke with Mrs. Peterson about some paper work to be filled out and got my folder full of activities. I headed down the hall to my trailer and was bombarded with hellos this morning. It was as if the kids knew this was my final visit. I spoke with Barb for several minutes and was very happy when she asked me to continue coming till the end of the school year. She told me I had been extremely helpful to both her and the students and that they all adored me and enjoyed the days that I came. This help put me in a much more positive mood and I went and sat at my table. I called up the second group first today just to mix it up and Bubbles, Cory, Trevor, and Trinity all came running up. Barb asked me to focus mainly on fluency today and showed me the finger dragging technique to show to the kids and make sure they were following it. At first we talked about punctuation. We went over all the different kinds of punctuations, what they were called, when to use them, how they affected the sentence and all the other basic stuff. We read through the first mini story about a dog and the kids struggled at first, but after having to re read pages they were clearly beginning to get a lot better at it. We then went on and read a second story about these two pigs and the kids had a much easier time with this book. After we finished reading the second story we talked about the story web and went over characters, settings, problems, and solutions. We talked again about the punctuation real quick and after forty minutes I had to send them all back to their seats. I then called up the second group of students and Ricky, Julian, Lucy, and J-rock all came over. They were all not very fond of reading either story but I told them it had to be done. We talked quickly about the punctuation and made sure everyone understood it. We then made our way into the first story about the puppy and this group seemed to struggle a little less than the others. After the puppy story we moved onto the pig one which was a little easier and more fun to read. The kids all did an excellent job reading and we completed the same story web and punctuation talk again. It was another successful day and I was looking forward to being able to returning again.