Volunteer work debrief

It's been a while since I have written here... and there's been much that has gone through in the past couple of weeks, which I shall touch on briefly.

I just came from the school (I didn't debrief in the past 2 weeks before this). Today is the last week of school before their holidays. the university is currently having their 2-week holidays, so I am coming in during my hols (lol).

Anyways, the past couple of weeks, I have observed how the teacher worked with the children on their modelled writing and their shared writing. The class is currently doing a unit on fairy tales. Last week, the teacher modelled to them how to write a letter to their a character of the fairy tale of their choice, and they had to choose a character to be. The activity requires the children to roleplay characters, and also had an indepth understanding of the story in order to be able to do that. The students who had difficulty would go to the bookshelf to take the respective storybooks to re-read and get some ideas from there.

All this while, I have only done reading with one literacy group. So today, I realised that the students worked in
rotations for their literacy group. For the students who were not reading, they were given other literacy work.

On Friday, which is Pupil-Free day, the teachers are going for some kind of professional teacher training workshop. My lecturers in class said that if there is an opportunity to observe a Reading Recovery class in session, it is an excellent opportunity to observe the strategies used in place to aid the students who had difficulty reading.

For the sem after the break, the children will be moving on to another unit, which is either MemFox or diversity in Australia. Anyways, after the break, the teacher told me that I could go and help out in another Year 3 class, as it would enable me to watch another class in action and see a more holistic picture of the education system in place.

Volunteer: public school (Day 1).

After many weeks of pausing, waiting (and not doing anything but freaking out), last week I finally called up a school to do volunteer work. I managed to get a school on the first try. Actually, I didn't know which school to call up so my friend, J. asked me to write down the names on pieces of paper and pick lots. *lol*. Not exactly the best way, but it worked. So there!

I managed to get a school on the first try ......which was really great, because I wasn't really sure which school to call up as they all looked like really great options. On the same day, I went to the school to personally sign up as I wasn't free any other day.

So today I woke up really early feeling much excitement in my bones! I arrived at the school, D.H (which is a block south-west walk from my university). It was really not exactly the best day to go in as apparently on that very day, all the schools were having Testing for the Year 3, 5 and 7s. The deputy principal was really busy, and I sat waiting in the office for about half an hour before anyone could direct anywhere (yes, principals and staff are always busy, you know?). So I had to excuse them for that.

I was directed to a Year 3 class *yeah!* There really wasn't much more me to do on that day, so I took two children (who had only just arrived not too long ago) and did some writing & reading activities with them, as they were not doing the testing. There were about 20+ students in that classroom, with about 2 middle-east students, and 1 new student who just arrived (and had to do the test!). That's strange in my opinion anyways.

I did manage to have a look at the Year 3 Test papers. It's not exactly a test that students can study for, as it just assesses the student's literacy and mathematical skills, and there are no pre-set questions or ways to help students. It is done as an on-going assessment, whereby students who do not do as well will be allocated assistance (or funding) by the govt. for remedial work. The questions were actually quite tricky, and the students had to read the questions on their own. Today they were assessed on the numeracy part (hence, the teacher was allowed to read from the paper), but tomorrow the students will assessed on the literacy part of the paper (and hence, have to read everything on their own without the teacher's assistance).

When the students went off to the library (after doing an hour of testing), one of the girls in the classroom by the name of Caroline, spoke to me and took me around. She was one of the longest as she had to repeat a year in the same class and knew her way around. (She acted like one of the student leaders, although she technically wasn't an assigned one, lol). The class went to the library, where the librarian (who had her arm in a bandage due to a blood clot) read a book to the children with a stern looking expression on her face.