Week 3: September 19th-23rd

 Monday, September 19th

➽Activity of the Day: From recognition to verbalization

    Today was the best day yet! While I was serving as the teacher, I felt like the student. Working with a little girl one-on-one, we went through a set of fifty flash cards. The cards had word chunks like "igh", "ide" or "ode" (ex: right, tide, mode). While I was going through the cards with this student, I learned how children process information. The little girl would sound out the words and use context clues to understand what the word was. I taught her that "igh" makes the [ I ] sound, and the rule about vowel-consonant-vowel. I then had her put the words she was learning into a sentence. I was elated when we went through the cards the student had previously struggled with, and she recognized them with ease. There is no word to describe the joy I felt when this second-grader told me what English pronunciation rules made those words be pronounced that way. 

Tuesday, September 20th 

➽Activity of the Day: Dynamite Dynamite Boom Boom Boom

    Today the students taught me a fun game called "Dynamite Dynamite, Boom Boom Boom". We stood in a circle with the teacher in the middle. The teacher would state a word the children had been working on this week, and we would go around the circle spelling the word. If a child said the incorrect letter, they would sit down, with the next child taking their spot. After the word was spelled, the next five would say "Dynamite Dynamite, Boom Boom Boom", and the fifth person- or final boom- would sit down. The goal was to be the last person standing. The kids got very into it!

Thursday, September 22nd

➽Activity of the Day: Reading groups

             My past two days at Hubbell have been spent working with kids individually on their reading skills. In our one-on-ones, both the student and I would have a copy of the book. To begin, I would read the book slowly to the child, and they would follow along. After I finished the book, we would switch roles and the student would read. The books are designed to work on certain phonetics and words. It was interesting how often the words "saw" and "was" would be mixed up by the students. If a child said "was" instead of "saw" or vice versa, I would stop them at the end of their sentence, and ask them what the first letter of the word sounded like. This would remind them that "was" begins with a "w" and has a  "wuh" sound, while "saw" begins with an "s" and has a "sss" sound. 

    The children often mixed up their "b"s and "d"s. When this happened, I asked them to picture the word "bed". Imagining that "b" is the headboard and "d" is the foot of the bed helps them to remember that "b" comes before "d", and which direction the circle in the two letters faces. These were little tricks I learned when I was a second-grader that I was glad to pass onto this class.