Volunteer Experience 2

Thank You Letter from 1st Graders

During Spring semester of 2015, I worked with the UM Tutoring Project to volunteer to help students with reading. I was placed in a classroom of 1^st graders at an elementary school in Missoula, where I volunteered twice a week for 1 hour during their “Walk to Read” time. During this time, the students were split up into skill-based reading groups.  One group would do independent work, one group would work with the classroom teacher, and I would work with the third group.  This would rotate during our time, so I would work with two groups each time I was there.  They were comprised of the same kids for the first quarter, and then during the second quarter groupings changed as a result of new knowledge the students had, and I worked with two of these new groups for the second quarter. The groups would read a book out loud together, and then we would work on packets of comprehension questions together.

This experience really helped me as a teacher because it gave me a taste of how learning to read can be, which is much different from the reading to learn set up that older grades have. I also worked with groups of students from various different economic and family backgrounds. This experience really opened up my eyes to the possibility that some kids are never read to at home, either because their parents do not have the time, or the resources. Children who do not have the opportunity for an adult to work with them on reading in a small group or one-to-one setting often do not have the same tools in their belt when they are learning to read at school. I was glad that I could provide some of these kids with additional time being read to or with in a group with an adult, as their classroom teachers often don’t have much time to spend working with students who really need the extra tutoring help.

I think that this experience will continue to help my understanding of students with diverse educational backgrounds, and I hope that it will help my instruction of these children to grow and match their specific needs.