tutoring with the four-year olds...

... in preschool classes again for the fall semester. The program is designed to help some of the little  people who seem to be struggling with their pre-reading skills. Any number of reasons: not being exposed to books, or not having someone in their lives who helps them every day, pointing out little things like the colors or letters on their cereal box. Not being in day care where they learn their letters, numbers, colors, shapes, where someone will help them learn how to form the letters to write their names. Not living in an environment with age appropriate reading material: exposure to books, being read to, seeing 'book handling' modeled, being shown how to hold a book, read from front to back, being careful with and respectful of the printed word.

So my small part of changing this is going to an elementary school for an hour one day a week. Spending twenty minutes or so with a four year old, reading a different book each week, taking a few minutes more to do a little work sheet that reinforces some aspect of the book: illustrations of animals, with the name printed to match to the picture. Or connect the dots with numbers that help to form the outline of one of the characters we read about. Or maybe dotted lines that spell out the some of words from the book. Simple things that help to insure the child has some understanding and retention of what we read. Five different people going in one day a week to read the book each day, then giving the book to the child on Friday to take home and hopefully have it read more.

I don't know how the person who runs the program decides which children are most in need, and could benefit from this extra help. Nor do I know how she evaluates the amount of improvement from the beginning to the end. But it would have to improve their skills, give them some needed assistance, a boost to improve their likelihood of success in the educational process, and therefore: life.

I've met with the two little guys twice, borrowing them from their classroom teachers to read for the past two Mondays. One is the most talkative four year old I have ever seen, we can hardly get the book read for all his conversation. The other is more shy, less exuberant and seems to be much more hesitant, inhibited, reserved. But they are both amusing, entertaining and will be interesting to get to know.