Summary: K4K Term 1 Buddy Reading

PRE-SESSIONS PLANNING

- Created a "October Buddy Reading Groups" Google spreadsheet to organise volunteer groupings

- Took down everyone's shirt size to provide number of shirts and their sizes to the K4K Buddy Reading person-of-contact

- Sent out emails with the full session details and rundown every Sunday (2 days prior to the session dates) with headers that included the student volunteers assigned

- Organising a small bus to take volunteers to the site with our CAS supervisor, Mr Walker (had to weigh out our priorities with limited budget of HK$2000)

- Attended a Buddy Reading Training Workshop hosted by Ms Cora Ha

BUDDY READING

Session 1 (Oct 6, 2015):

Notes:

- Kids relatively obedient and listening, managed to calmdown noisy ones

- Very interesed in GRA and making arts & crafts for the half-time activity

- Most kids were paired up and settled down during the individual reading

Emotions:

- Feeling quite successful as this was our first BRP session of the 2015-16 academic term, and it yielded good results/response

Session 2 (Oct 13, 2015):

Notes:

- Kids much more noiser and less obedient

- A lot of time was used in calming down and quieting the children

- One particular child was extremely loud and distracting: solution was to assign one volunteer to him (1 to 1 handling)

- Since most of them were highly energised, we let them do their own thing to wear them out so they would quiet down for reading: quite effective as many sat down for individual reading

Emotions:

- Rather frustrated as this was the worst case scenario that we hoped wouldn't happen

- Some volunteers became quite annoyed and restless (including myself)

- Reassured ourselves that this was normal and we could take control back gradually

- Encouraged all volunteers to maintain a positive attitude and reminded ourselves that this may be one of the times where they can "have fun" and "read"

Session 3 (Oct 27, 2015):

Notes:

- Better than second session

- Noise levels considerably lower

- Interaction during GRA improved: children could identify animals and answered questions enthusiastically; made animal sounds and read along; attention captured except for one child

- One K4K student leader managed to get one misbehaving child to settle down (psychological method)

- Kids enjoyed the half-time activity of making stick puppets: diligently colouring in the animals and showing the finished product proudly

Emotions:

- More positive, felt a complete end to our Term 1 Buddy Reading

- Satisfied with our session; some volunteers also expressed interest in continuing next term

CAS L.O. addressed:

[6 . 10 . 15 to 13 . 10 . 15 to 27 . 10 . 15]

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