Lisa Roberts/Service Learning

Today was my first day of service learning. I was excited about it and had been pre-asssigned to work with a student whose first language is Spanish. I did not have alot of information about the child, only that he is in 5th grade. I would be able to help him during the 90 minute reading block. Unfortunately when I arrived I found out that the class was doing testing.This turned out to be a good thing in many ways because I had the opportunity to talk with the teacher (quietly) about lesson plans, grading writing pieces, and general classroom planning. I asked Mrs. Sparrow how far ahead she planned her lessons and found out that she chose to stay about two weeks ahead for detailed plans but had a basic plan for the whole year. She did this by taking into account all of the SSS standards required for the year and dividing them up into four terms. She explained that at the fifth grade level certain subjects had a pre-determined sequence. In math the knowledge is built upon and pretty much follows the textbook. Social studies also follows a time-line starting with explorers and moving forward sequentially. Mrs. Sparrow turns in her lesson plans at the beginning of each week to the principal. She keeps a copy in her classroom and she uses her own template as opposed to a fill in the blank format. I also had the chance to look over the teacher's copy of the textbook that my student would be using for reading. It was very self explanatory and clearly listed the SSS standards that were being addressed by each section. I also found out from the ESOL assistant that my student moved here from Cuba about a year ago. He has one younger sister and he choses to speak only English. I found it interesting that the ESOL teacher thought that his refusal to speak any Spanish was limiting him in his ability to learn English. She felt that if he connected what he was learning in English to his pre-requisite knowledge in Spanish he would learn faster. He really wants to fit in with his English speaking peers though and refuses his home language. I would like to see him embrace both and my feeling is that once he is more confident in his English he will feel more comfortable being bi-lingual.
Overall I feel my first day was very productive and useful even though I didn't get to tutor. I learned alot and had a chance to get to know the teacher a little which I wouldn't have been able to do if she had been busy teaching.