I mentioned in another post that I go into Pinewoods Elementary every Thursday and I wanted to share an experience I had related to Miss Miller's first grade class. Recently, I've been helping a student, Hajayra, who has been having trouble with her ending sounds. Miss Miller has a book full of ideas and activities to use for students having difficulties in certain reading areas. However, there were no activities specifically for ending sounds. I tried to think of a way to help her and I finally decided to help her on the Starfall.com website. It is a GREAT website for students learning to read, because it has the ABC's, making words, and even reading. In the word making part, it shows the ending sound for a bunch of words like _AT, it could be HAT, CAT, BAT, or RAT. It first shows the AT, sounds that out and then shows a picture and says the word that is to be formed. She really enjoyed it when she got them right and I think having my approval was important to her.
I learned about ESOL students and helping them learning with computer websites. Hajayra will be repeating the first grade, but she has made some good progress towards reading this year. Some challenges I faced were making sure the website was appropriate and having her focus on the computer. It was easy to explore the website, which was recommended to me by my mom so I knew it couldn't be bad. Hajayra's attention span is very short and I had to keep switching her focus back to the computer, because she wanted to see what the rest of the class was doing. I learned something about myself, I have a lot of determination. It didn't occur to me until I wanted Hajayra to do all the exercises and do them right. Of course, we didn't have time for it, but I saw her potential and wanted to see her succeed.
I have enjoyed all the classroom time I have experienced and I can only look forward to more.
1 comment:
This post made me want to explore the website and see how it could affect a cousin of mine. He is having a very difficult time understanding words and being able to speak. At first we thought he might not be able to hear because his brother learned to talk very quickly. He is now almost four and still only mumbles. he goes to speach therapy but i think he would learn more if his parents were to try and work with him at home more. he is very interested in computers and plays games on them very easily. This is why this post caught my attention. What was the easiest way to keep the attention of the child you were working with? I was interested in explaining it to the parents so they would be able to work with their son.
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