乐播传媒

2nd Place Winner

Post 1:

I am working with the Reading Buddies program at the Boulder Public Library, and it has been so much fun thus far. My little buddy's name is Lucas, he is five years old and just started kindergarten. Lucas is bilingual; he speaks and understands both Spanish and English, and is Peruvian. Lucas was very quiet at first, but always let me know when he was ready to move on from a book, or if he would rather color for a little instead. I notice him be less shy each session, and ask more and more questions. Lucas blew me away with how smart he is! I remember not being able to read when I first started kindergarten, and he can already recognize certain words, and both read and write them. Lucas also has a big vocabulary. When I ask him if he knows what a words means while we are reading he almost always explains it perfectly. Lucas loves animals and super heroes, some of his favorites include Spiderman, dinosaurs, cheetahs, and sharks. He always makes sure to pick out a Spiderman book first. He enjoys reading books in both Spanish and English, one day we found a book about Machu Picchu and when I told him that was in Peru he was so excited to read and learn about it, which I though was so sweet and was so happy to see how excited he got to learn a little more about his culture. As we start our picture book, Lucas has decided that he is the main character and he turns into Spiderman. Although we only have a few ideas, he did say that at the end of the book, Spiderman (Lucas) will defeat the bad guy with his spiderwebs, and I'm super excited to see his creativity shine though and him picture himself as his very own super hero of his very own story.听

Post 2:

听听 听I am a reading buddy on Tuesdays at the Boulder Public Library. My buddy is in kindergarten so his attention span is a little smaller, and he can get tired or overwhelmed pretty easily. My buddy loves to color, so when he's looking for a break from reading we color and I usually ask him to draw what he wants his story to look like, which he is always willing and excited to do. This helps us towards the end goal of creating his picture book, as well as giving him some chance to decide how he wants our reading buddy session to go. Other times my buddy opts for a game, always picking out a new one to learn, and he has so much fun beating me at every game. I think I could incorporate this competition aspect a bit in our sessions potentially in writing our book. When he gets a little tired of thinking about the plot I could say "okay if we finish this page in five minutes you get to pick out a game!" in order to add some fun to the encouragement.听

听听 听A strength my buddy has is his vocabulary. More times than not if I ask him what a word means he can explain the meaning pretty well. Since he did just start school not too long ago, he can't read full sentences yet, but I am trying to get him to recognize sight words better. When a word or sound is repeated throughout the book I pause so that he can say the word. My buddy is also a fan of using the library computers to look up a book he would like to read, and he always asks me how to spell it out, so we work together to sound out the words as he types it in.

Post 3:

听听 听This was my first semester participating in the literacy practicum. I have been volunteering on Tuesdays at the Boulder Public library with Reading Buddies. Sometimes I forget how much energy kids have but I learned that instead of saying something like "don't run" it's so much more efficient nicer to say "lets walk please". This experience has also reminded me how fun it is to be creative even in silly ways. It has been something I look forward to every week.听

听听 听In the beginning I was having a harder time keeping my little buddy engaged in both the reading and story writing, and I didn't think we would finish our book in time. I noticed that my buddy really enjoyed drawing, and whenever he began to feel a bit overwhelmed or tired he would ask to draw. Because he loves drawing so much, I began asking him to draw what he wanted his story to look like, and went off of those pictures for inspiration, and to help him generate ideas. We actually ended up finishing a little bit early which was great, and he seemed to have more fun with it than when we initially began working on our story. My buddy is a kindergartener, and although he has quite a vocabulary when we began the sessions he was just learning how to read. We were working on sight words, and I can definitely see him recognizing more and more on his own. This has been very exciting to me because he participates more in the reading now which has kept him more engaged. I am very proud of the progress I have seen my buddy have, and am very excited to see our finished product here soon.

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