Reading Buddy Summary

Reading Buddy portfolio has helped me to put into practice the things I learned in
Literacy in Early Childhood Education. Through this project I wanted to challenge myself by
helping a student who struggled with literacy. I talked to my supervising teacher and she told me
two children who struggled with literacy skills, and who would be willing to work with me. I
chose Aiden to be my focus child, but I also worked with the other child. I believed that having
Aiden and child 2 working together would help Aiden focus more when doing lessons. Through
my observation in the first couple of weeks I noticed that Aiden would need the teacher’s
approval on all his work and would often wonder around the room. Child 2 on the other hand
was more reserved and quieter. Partnering these two children together was smart because they
had such different strengths and weaknesses that they could offer one another. Throughout my
time spent in the classroom I realized this was a smart decision because they started to encourage
each other on their work, and it helped Aiden to stay focused on his work rather than going to
find the teacher after every problem he would complete. The second reason I chose these two
children were because they both came from low socioeconomic homes. This is the demographic
I want to work with later in my teaching career. Aiden parents are separated, and his parents
work hard to provide. From my interview with the teacher the parents want to see Aiden perform
well, but only seem to put a little effort in at home. Aiden also is part of the backpack project so
he is provided with meal at the end of the week, and sometimes has to eat breakfast at school.
These environmental aspects of his life have shaped how I address Aiden in his lessons. I know
that Aiden needs focused attention, and opportunities to play within the lesson plans I created. I
also wanted to make Aiden feel special and made sure he knew that I really cared about him, and
not just his academics.
When working with Aiden I was able to help him in multiple environments one on one,
small group, and whole group times. My lessons were mostly one on one except for the
handwriting lesson I did with Aiden and child 2. Having one on one time with Aiden was
beneficial because he wasn’t distracted by thing that were going on in the classroom. Sometimes
it was hard for him to focus when there are other people in the hall because he wanted to know
what everyone else was doing. Something that I observed that helped me to assess that he was
learning was when other random children would walk by and ask what he was doing. Aiden
would take the time to explain to the children how he was able to build words with the unifix
cubes and then read them. He would practice demonstrating to the visiting child and then ask if
they wanted to try. This would show me that he really understood and listened to what I told him
and he was able to put into his own words for other children to understand. When I did my lesson
on handwriting with Aiden and child 2 they were intrigued by my super mini crayons, and how
they were going to be able to use them. First we talked about how we can control our fingers and
what we use them for after talking and letting them play with the mini crayons we worked on
writing our numbers. The supervising teacher provided worksheet for me to use with the
children. Aiden often started focused and was careful with his number formation then he would
start going really fast and I would remind him to slow down our brains so we could make our
best numbers. Through this lesson Aiden made a self-reflection saying “I am bad at writing the
number 8, but Mason is good at it.” Mason responded by saying, “ Thank you. I really like how
good you wrote your fives.” I really liked how they weren’t comparing about who was better or
worse at writing, but focused more on each other strengths. During small group activities I would
start at Aiden’s and Masons group to make sure they have full understanding of what they need
to do. Once I felt like they had a good grasp I would float around the classroom to offer help to
other children, but also allowing Aiden the ability to work independently. During large group
instruction I would sit next to Aiden on the ground so he could pay attention to the lesson and
not get distracted by everything else going on. I found that sitting with him helped because I was
able to model good group time behavior for not just Aiden, but the entire class.
My initial question for the supervising teacher was what did she need from me while I
was in her class and what did she think Aiden needed to improve literacy skills. Her response
was that she wasn’t able to provide one on one work as much as she would like because she had
no help. Through the observation I saw how needy for attention her children seemed. This is
something that I wanted to address with Aiden, but also give him the confidence to work on his
own. My lessons seemed to fit Aiden well, and he was eager to do those lessons again when I
would come visit the class. I did realize that he needed extra time to move and learn through
movement. When I watched him do movement to videos that the teacher showed he would be
engaged for a little, but then he would get distracted. I found this interesting because he was an
active child and when given the time to move he wasn’t very engaged so I tried a one on one
approach with him. This is where my tall, small, and long letter activity showed me that he did
like movement, but it needed to be in a less distracting environment. From that point I tried to
incorporate some fun movement before and during any one on one activities. For example, an
activity we did for was to rhyme words with an ending of ING. The words we came up with were
zing, king, ring, and ding. After we came up with these words we would define them by giving
them a physical action for example: I asked him to zing down the hallway as fast as he could.
This allowed him a chance to run and have a simple understanding of the word zing
(vocabulary).
I learned so much from the children in this practicum experience and also from my
teacher who was a first-year teacher. I realized the importance of sitting with the children on
their level. When working with the children in my class I found them to be more engaged and
willing to participate when I was sitting on the rug with them. Something that stuck with me was
that “Nothing can replace the feeling of reading in someone’s lap”. When the teacher provided
the time to have free read I would find that children wanted to sit in my lap and read books
together. When the short time was up they still wanted to keep reading. I think this is something
that I would like to incorporate into my future class is taking the time to read with children on
their level and letting them just be close to me. Young children need that feeling of being loved
and safety in the classroom especially when that’s where they spend most of their day. The
second biggest lesson I learned was encouraging them to push their boundaries and telling them
what they did well. For example, during a small group reading with two children I asked them if
they thought they could make the big word telephone that they saw in their book with the unifix
cubes. The two children were eager to build the word for me and once they were done I asked
them how many letters were in that word. They had such a surprised look on their face as they
said, “I build a nine-letter word. That is a big word for kindergarten!”. I think it’s important to
create that intrinsic sense of pride for children because that is the best motivator. This was also
one of the things I wanted to work on with Aiden was creating an intrinsic sense of pride in his
work. I wanted him to develop those thoughts that I can do it by myself because I’m smart
because I could read “Otis the tractor by myself with the help of Ms. O.” I believe that I was able
to help Aiden achieve a little bit of that pride with the time I had to work with him.