Last Visit 11/15/07

Well, I finally completed the nine visits and the fifteen hours for VIPS. Before I arrived to my last visit today, I was thinking that I didn’t want to give up the VIPS badge. I liked that red ribbon that was tied onto the badge. The badge also had field trip information on the back. In case it got lost, it would get sent back to the school address. On the front was information to let others in the school know that I was a VIPS volunteer there. I was thinking, too, about all my past visits and that I was going to miss everyone there. I finally got the courage to make that one last visit. For the first time, today’s class started off with a science experiment that they were continuing. They learned that colors are actually a mixture of several pigments. The kids were amazed to see the different colors (pigments) from ink on the special filter paper. When the teacher turned on the overhead for the Math lesson, one of the students noticed that the light seemed to create a rainbow on the paper. One was with lots of pinks and purplish colors and the other was with blue, green, and yellow. For their Math lesson they were working on separating things into categories. An example would be: Where did Ms. Cutter’s 3rd grade class like to eat?—either indoosr or outdoors would be the categories. They also looked at a bar graph and did line plots. Ms. Chippis was going to hand out their report cards when I gave my thank-you presents to her and the students. Ms. Chippis’ mouth dropped wide open when she saw the white board and the pencils along with the grips and erasers to go with it. I passed out the pencils to everyone while someone else in the class passed out the others. I saw the new eraser tips on their pencils when I looked if everyone got some. I also got my disposition paper back and the kids got their report cards. Ms. Chippis said that I can come back anytime I want to, to help out or just to help myself in my teaching journey. Counting down the last few minutes and then it was “love, sweet love!” just like one of the songs that they play at the end of the day instead of using bells. :)

8th Visit: 11/9/07

This was a visit to catch up on my 15 hours. I went only for one hour in the afternoon today. Almost there, one more visit to go, yay! Boy, I am going to miss them so much. Again, today, there was nothing for me to do. With the teacher, the kids went over the math test that they did yesterday. Most of them did alright. They were so quiet yesterday, it scared me.

7th Visit: 11/8/07

Today the teacher was giving the students a Math test. The test had to do with number placement and adding and subtracting. Ms.Chippis explained the format of the test to her students. The way that they have been taught in class is the way they should be doing it, by breaking down the problem into 100s and 10s and 1s. They took about an hour to complete the test. At first, Ms.Chippis planned to conclude the day by reading a book to the class. Instead, they just did silent reading by themselves until the end of class. As a volunteer, there really wasn’t that much for me to do. The other volunteer that showed up the other weeks also came again today. I feel more comfortable with another person there also helping. Though, today there really wasn’t a reason for me to be there. I spent most of my time daydreaming about myself as a teacher with my own class. Anyway, I also handed in my Dispositions form for Ms.Chippis to fill out so I can put it into my teaching folder that I will be passing in soon. Hopefully, I will get it back next week when I am back at the school.

6th Visit: 11/1/07

As I was waiting for the class to get back from the Library again, I saw that they had written a paper about their experiences. Some papers were about family, birthdays, and traveling from Puerto Rico to our country on a plane. I noticed they had spelling errors and grammatical errors. Otherwise they sounded great. For homework, they have to “publish” it. The teacher used the word “publish” as meaning the final draft. Next was their normal Math lesson on the schedule. They were learning to add coins. I noticed there was another girl volunteer today. There must me one always for the Math lessons that they have. I think that this is a great thing to do, rather than just be a reading buddy. Volunteers or tutors should just come in during the younger kids’ school day for a buddy or someone to work with. I joined in with a Math game that they played. The Math game was called “Close to 100”. The kids got in a group and dealt six cards out to each other. The cards were numbered one through nine including a wild card. Out of the six cards, they had to pick four to get an addition problem that got them close to 100. They did this activity for about a half hour. Everyone was really happy doing this. The teacher made them clean up their group of desks. There were folders and books everywhere. I saw some kids finishing up Halloween word searches. I heard that they will be watching a movie tomorrow if they get their papers in. Three things I noticed: one, my teacher wears jeans; two, the office to get in the school building is in a weird location. It’s not near the entrance of the school. Anyone could get buzzed in, such as a sex offender, and go through the whole building without being caught. And three, the office sign reads “officina principal”. Also, the school has a PTA meeting nextTuesday.