Nic-TP3

Today, I went to work with the children of migrant workers through a program ran by PAEC. There was about a quarter less children there day as many of their families began to move to other places in search of work.

I worked with Emilio; a spunky rising kindergartner sporting spiked hair, a Mario tee, and a mischievous smile.

At the instruction of Mrs. Larida, the teacher, we covered three pages of a language workbook. The first page contained rhymes (e.g. match lake/rake and hat/bat), the second page was matching starting sounds (fox with football and nest with net), and the last page covered chronological order (three pictures on how to bake a cake, number from one to three).

Emilio did well on all the pages with rhyming being the most difficult. Coloring the completed sections added incentive (graffiti for minors; what a great internal reward). To test comprehension of colors, when Emilio asked for the red crayon, I’d give him the yellow one. He’d grin, shake his head and say, “That’s not the red one!” I did that with a couple different colors until I was sure that he knew the basic color words. Exploring concepts through stories and motions worked well. For example, He didn’t know the word for a picture of a worm, so I acted out a worm and explained it’s what you use to go fishing and it lives underground).

The kids took a break and after that I read a few books to them. Before we started, I reviewed vocabulary that goes along with every book: spine, front cover, back cover, and (the most challenging one) introduction. It was a good reminder to me to not assume what students know: the thought hadn’t even crossed my mind that they wouldn’t know these words. The books I read were “David Goes To School” (A humorous read about one kid bumbling through Western classroom etiquette) and “Peter Pan”.