Student Reflection

by Lydia Fleming

This week at the International Prep Academy I had the opportunity to lead an activity for the entire class. I arrived on Monday morning and without fail I am welcomed with loads of hugs from the first-grade class I volunteer in. Their welcoming and joyful energy instantly makes me happy and feel useful in the classroom. When I arrived, the children were working on an activity with a substitute teacher in English. They were putting together sentences and forming a story. Some of the children excel in this area, however other children tend to lose focus and become frustrated. This is where I step in to remind them “bodies controlled, hands to ourselves, and eyes on the teacher.” This phrase is often repeated in the classroom to make sure the first graders are paying attention as best they can.

Once the kids moved from the mat to their desks, they worked on making their own sentences and stringing their sentences together to make a story. This is something they have been working on all year. The goal is to have an entire story written by the end of the year. As I walk around the room, I can see some students have pages and pages of writing done with amazing drawing at the top to illustrate what they are writing. Some of the students are writing about their own lives or dreams, while other students are writing stories about made up characters and imaginary paces. Their imagination is inspiring and fills me with joy to see their creativity explode on the page.

During this time, I always check up on the kids I work with individually. Typically, I work with students whose first language is Spanish. Their hard work really shows in their writing. I can see them sounding out words and trying their best to translate a word from Spanish to English. I personally cannot imagine how difficult this may be for them because I never had this experience as a child. Sometimes they get frustrated and want to give up, but I always try to step in and encourage them. One individual I worked with this week was very mad during writing time. I went over to him and asked him what was wrong in English, which made him even more frustrated. I saw that he struggling to finish the page of his story. This time I asked him in Spanish what was making him upset and he explained to me how he didn’t understand why he couldn’t just write his story in Spanish. As best I could, I told him that this was time for learning in English, and even though it may be hard he was doing great. I decided to sit with him during the remainder of the class and we worked word by word to finish his page. After he thanked me for helping him spell out his words.

Finally, it was my time to lead an activity for the class. That day they had a spelling test. Since I had been working with the students and I had seen their teacher give a spelling test before, the substitute let me instruct them. The kids were just as excited as I was to give them their test. The spelling test consisted of 20 short words that were relatively easy, but there were some tricky ones in there. I started by saying the word two times and then giving them the word in an example sentence. As I walk around the room, I could see who struggled with spelling and who excelled in this area. It was interesting to see. I could see the confidence in some children and then I could see other children just wanted it to be over. After the test, I made sure everyone knew they did great by trying their hardest and all the kids were happy for it to be over.

I look forward to going back tomorrow to see what new things I can learn from the children.