On the 3rd of October during our free block, me and Andrian set off to the 1st grade classrooms, to read to the children. This was our second time conducting reading buddies; a service project where we read to kids in 1st grade over the course of the year in order to improve their vocabulary as well as comprehension skills.
(Credit: Ms. Gamage)
For this session, we selected 3 different books; Boa’s Birthday Gift, Earth’s Weather and Look Grandma! Boa’s Birthday Gift was a big success with the grade 1s voting it as the “best book they have ever read” at the end of class. This time, in order to ensure that we didn’t lose the attention of the young first graders, we ensured that each time we read a page, we asked them questions about the information/pictures on that page. By doing this, we were also able to ensure that they absorbed the content and took part in discussions. Overall it was a good experience and we hope to replicate a similar experience next time!
(Credit: Ms. Gamage)
Learning outcomes:
Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process: Scheduling this session was extremely unplanned and last minute as we didn’t know Ms Gamage’s schedule. In order to counter this obstacle for next time, we got the schedule and decided that we would communicate at least a week prior.
Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience: While I already established that our organization was not great, we still managed to get in touch with Ms. Gamage and plan this session. I also ensured to be in contact with Dr. Leigh while planning to make sure that we didn’t use our free block in which we had our reading buddies session for anything extended essay related.