Lisa Roberts/Service Learning

Today was my second day of service learning. I felt like I was thrown off the deep end of the dock. I have volunteered at this school in the past so I guess they just thought I knew what I was doing so they gave me the instructor's manual and a lone ESOL student and said "take him to the cafeteria and do his lesson". I quickly realized that there is alot you need to know before you can just go teach a lesson. The lesson was on reading comprehension, spelling, and vocabulary. I had not read the story so I didn't really know if the student had comprehended it or not. I also was told to give him a spelling test and if he got at least 90% correct he would not have to take the test on Friday. This seemed to go OK and he speeled all but one word correctly. He had his workbook with him but I wasn't exactly sure how many pages we were supposed to do. The lesson was clearly broken down into reading blocks or mini-lessons. The Sunshine State Benchmarks were also written on each page so it would be easy to follow once you have the format figured out. It basically runs one story per week. The student would read it on Monday and follow up with lessons throughout the week on the same story. After "winging" it in the cafeteria we returned to the room where the rest of the class was working on silent reading (ha-ha). They were in pairs and some groups were reading others were doing various odd things like sitting on top of one another (for real). I decided I would be most useful preparing myself for next week's reading block and read the story that "my student" will be working on so I am not lost. My main lesson of the day is that "PLANNING" is a requirement of succesful teaching.