Party Time!

Today was bittersweet. A party with root beer floats, goldfish crackers, and over-sized goodbye cards, but also a sad time, as we all realized that our twice a week sessions would be over.

We started with The Million Dollar Shot — fun, and we needed to end with finishing the story! Our student was so excited to finish it, too. We spent about 10 minutes reflecting on it afterwards. Then we moved to the hard stuff, to get it out of the way. Word lists were first. Today was a new day, and we noticed that our student did much better. Perhaps he was just tired previously, but he breezed through the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th grade word lists and was recorded at Instructional level for the 5^th grade list. For our short passages, our student measured at the 5^th grade level, with 4^th/5^th grade as Instructional. [Keep in mind he’s a 3^rd grader, so this is awesome!]

After getting the final assessments out of the way, we had time for fun! We combined with the remainder of our class [our four other classmates were actually working with our student’s younger, five-year-old brother] for a root beer float and snack party!

To keep our party educational, we gave each of our students an over-sized card with text written in the inside and goodbye notes from each of us. We had our students read the text and we read along with them to keep our final day fun, but also reading-related.

After eating and reading, we went outside to play Spelling Dodgeball. Each person, when up to bat, heard a word and had to repeat it, spell it, and use it in a sentence before kicking! It was fun, and a great way to burn off some energy, while still learning!

We took a silly picture afterwards, too!

And before we left, we did a group break: “3-2-1 I LOVE READING!”

Overall, this has been such a wonderful experience and I’m sad to see our little guys go! I hope to see them in the future, and I’m also excited to start my summer reading/writing tutoring lessons!

*Names used with permission