3/16  Journal Entry—Reflection on Lesson—After School Literacy Program  [ISSUE #9]

 

            R___ arrived tonight calm, quiet, and ready to work.  She was excited to think she could read her book for the audience, and worked hard the entire hour to finish the book illustrations.  She commented a couple of times that she didn’t think her mother would like her book.  We reassured her that her pictures were great and, of course, her mother would like her book.

            Then, her mother arrived.  I was showing her R___’s dialogue journal, and pointing out the drawings she had made in the journal.  Her mother’s comments, unfortunately, were negatively focused on R___’s sloppy handwriting.  She said nothing about the content or the drawings. I wanted to cry……

 

2/2  Journal Entry--Reflection on Lesson--After School Literacy Program [ISSUE #5]

 

            …..Before this lesson, we had talked a bit here and there about  story elements.  We talked about our creative books, and they wanted to dictate them right away.  Great!  I thought.  So I asked S____ to start.  She told me a couple of unrelated facts.  A____ did the same.  To backtrack, I told them a story about monkeys.  They tried again, but were no further along than before.  We did a bit of webbing.  I had them pick a character, a name, the character’s friends/family, where they lived, what was going to happen, etc.  After that they were on a roll.  They both dictated a story with limited prompts from me.  The only problem was that in both stories, the students wanted the main character to die a gruesome death (getting speared, and getting his head bit off).  I did not want to interfere with their creativity, but I felt that this was inappropriate.  I interfered and guided them to have something else happen to their character instead of dying.  So, the flamingo got speared, but she did not die, and the shark got his head bit off, but the doctor taped it back on.  These stories are complete, but I think we’re going to try for one later that is not so silly….

 

2/11  Journal Entry—Reflection on Lesson—After School Literacy Program [ISSUE #1]

 

            ….It seems that every other week is successful, and then the week in between, I want to pull my hair out.  I thought I would do the phonemic awareness testing today.  S_____’s test should be pretty accurate, but A_____ made it very clear that he did not want to do the test.  He made slash marks for the syllables and phonemes without even looking at the word.  When I asked him what the slashes were for, he didn’t know.  So he had to erase them and start over.  His effort was minimal, and so I know that the test results are going to be far from accurate.  It was frustrating because they did not seem to know anything!  Not rhyming words, phonemes, syllables, nothing!  They both represented the sounds with phonemes correctly, but the rest of the test was a disaster. I feel like I have so much to work on with them, but only a few weeks left! I don’t know where to go from here.

            Last week they were so excited to do the sight words flash cards.  This week it was like pulling teeth.  A_____ was just in a negative mood all day, and S_____ followed his lead.  I tried doing all kinds of activities, but nothing went smoothly.  My mini-lesson on blending was hopeless.  I thought they were getting it (we worked on “th” and “sh” words because they both have difficulty pronouncing words with those sounds), but when I would ask what sound the “th” makes, they would say “shhh.”  I was so frustrated.  It is difficult to teach students who do not want to learn.  And then what do you do when you have one who does want to learn, but the other is sending out negative vibes?

            I brought out my National Geographic magazines that I had brought in, thinking that looking at pictures of African animals would be exciting for the students.  S_____ spent some time looking at the elephants and frogs, but A_____ flipped through the pages of four different magazines in just as many minutes.  I brought one out on sharks and snakes for him because I know he loves them, but he was uninterested.  I tried to look through them with him, pointing out interesting fact, but his mind was elsewhere.  I just really feel like we got nothing accomplished today.  The only part where I had their attention was when I was reading orally, and even then it wasn’t A_____’s full attention…I want to feel like I’ve helped these students by the time this class is over, and if we have any more days like today, I’m afraid that we’re not going to get anywhere.