My Reading Blog

As a follow up to last week's post,  the first session of our After School Mentoring Program was a SUCCESS! After a slightly rocky start regarding the bus pick up, the rest of the afternoon went smoothly. We had 15 kids attend - five of them repeats from last year - 7 from 4th grade and 8 from 3rd grade. One challenging child (isn't that normal?), but overall, the kids were well behaved, willing to accept our help.  Most of the parents came and stayed for supper and talk.  We had pizza and one young man ask if he could have a pencil and paper so he could find out what kind of pizza everyone would like to have.  I suggested he have 3 choices - cheese, sausage and peperoni.  He did this all one his own and I complimented his parents when I talked with them. The most rewarding moment for me was when I had been working with A (who was new to the program).  We had worked on her science paper and when it was time to move to the next area, she looked at me...

Thursday will be the beginning of the 4th year of our church's After School Mentoring Program.  The first year we tested our feet (minds) with working with 8th & 9th graders.  It was a successful first year, but we had to rethink what we felt comfortable in assisting the kids.  So the 2nd year we opened the program to 8th and 3rd graders.  We felt it too was successful, although we worked mainly with 3rd graders.  We found our knitch.  The 3rd year started off with no one signing up in the fall, but we persevered and tried again in January.  We had 12 sign up, but only 8-10 showed every week. When the kids arrive, we have an "active" activity to play followed by a snack and then off to our mentoring. We revamped our format last year.  In the first two years we worked one-on-one with the students helping with reading, writing, math or whatever they needed help with for a full hour.  Last year we decided to break it up into three 20-25 ...