Jeffrey Rice #2

After a couple mishaps I am happy to say the SWAP program is working out. My first student, after a couple meetings decided she was too busy to continue working with me in the program. Now I have a new student named Hugo; we have had a couple of classes. Unfortunately Hugo had to miss our first week of classes because he hurt his back working. Hugo is for the most part fluent in English, and is a lot of fun to talk to. He is a level 6B and is almost done with the program. This is very nice for me because my first student was a 2A and I really had difficulty communicating with her. I am glad to say that we both love sports and talking about them. He likes fútbol and I like football so it was interesting to see how the cultures are similar yet different. I plan to take him on a field trip out to breakfast one of these days. The material we're going over is less everyday vocabulary and much more narrowed focus. It deals with the timing of events and understanding some less popular slang ways of saying things like "beats me". I'm excited to see Hugo continue to learn English after this class and hope he becomes completely fluent in the next year. Overall, this semester has been a good experience, and I am excited to finish the semester strong with Hugo.

Bridget and I have gotten a lot closer over the past month. She loves sharing stories about her friends at school and about her fights with her brothers and sisters. We usually spend the first 15 minutes of our session catching up about her week. We then work on our name tags for the day. She loves her name written in cursive so I have been teaching her how to do that. She thinks her name looks prettier written that way. When we finish nametags, we switch off between reading, drawing pictures for her book, and recently making origami every session. We found a book that was on how to make origami and Bridget wanted to learn how. Her favorite thing to make is a shape that looks like a boat one way and a hat if you turn it the other way.

I have noticed that Bridget is a very observant child. She loves watching all of the other reading buddies and is always interested in what they are doing. I find it hard to hold her attention for a long amount of time. Bridget likes when we have a schedule for the day and when we don't stay focused on anything for too long. The more I have planned for the day, the more fun she ends up having. I have found that switching things up and always having a plan for the day holds her attention. If I do lose her attention though, I ask her if she likes what we are doing or give her an option of doing another activity which often refocuses her.

Overall, Bridget is very successful in the reading buddies program. She loves reading and is always interested in new books and new things to be doing. Most of the other reading buddies struggle to get their little buddies to want to read but I never have struggled with Bridget. She is a bright and very easy little girl to be around.

My favorite activity Bridget and I do together is work on her book. She is so funny and creative with what she chooses for her characters to do. Her tigers get ice cream, fight bulls, and have family dinner together. Her pictures are very elaborate and she loves spending time on the details of their stripes.

Sierra Kohlruss #2

Atticus is still an exciting and imaginative little boy. His thoughts and descriptions are incredibly creative and he loves to tell me stories. Atticus is a very personable kid, always coming up with things to talk about, never leaving a silent or dull moment. He always has a good time at school, coming to Reading Buddies with some sort of story from that day. Our session two weeks ago on March 20th, Atticus was beginning to illustrate for his story. The pictures he drew were incredibly intricate and creative. These pictures went along with a very creative story that I am very proud of Atticus for coming up with. If there wasn't a limit on how long the stories could be, Atticus would have made his story 20 pages long. I think reading so many books gives Atticus these awesome ideas for his story which makes me happy to know I am developing him as a writer and reader in some way.

Through helping write Atticus's story and reading to Atticus, I've paid more attention to the dialect that Linguistics 1000 made me realize that I have. I try and be much more articulate when talking to Atticus, so he doesn't pick up on any incorrect grammar or incorrect phonetics. Without being in Linguistics 1000, I would not have realized I even had a dialect or that I should be more aware of my lexical, grammar, and phonetic linguistic features when speaking to others, especially children.

This Reading Buddy experience has taught me a lot about how the simple act of reading a child books and stories will allow their imagination and creativity to expand a massive amount. Language in U.S. society is the foundation of children's imagination. When reading a book, a child is not just taking the story as it is, they are developing their own story as well, getting ideas and images from that book which is what makes reading so special. This is why it is extremely important for children to be reading at a young age and to embrace all the books that they can!