Volunteer

Spare a day,

Go to school,

Volunteer!

What a fantastic experience for you and your grandchildren!  Volunteer in the classroom, observe them in action, view the classroom.  I did just that, volunteered in my granddaughter's classroom.  If your grandchild has a good, organized teacher who has put in place routines and procedures in the classroom, you are in for one phenomenal experience.  Last week, I had such an experience and I am ready to go back next month.

While in the classroom I made it a point to observe:

• her interactions with other students
• interactions with teacher and students in a whole group situation
• participation in small group
• word wall- sight words that are posted - make note of them
• learning stations- make a note of the skills they are working on
• Writing Journal, Reading Journal- ask if you can flip through them, make note of phonetic spelling, drawings(do they contain details),  capital letters and periods.  It is okay not to see what you think should be complete sentences, but you want to see attempts at them.
• the letter they were working on for the week
• the name of the reading series that is in use in the classroom

With this information, you can better help your grandchildren advance in reading.

Now, what do you do with this information?  Ideas will be forthcoming in the blog over the weeks.