Day 3.

Since the Wednesday after school program was cancelled due to early dismissal day for the school district, I continued my day three of volunteering at Bailey Gatzert on Thursday. The day began in the reading room where the students had to study sight words. If the students read the word wrong, they had to write it down on a piece of paper and configure a sentence using the word. Alexia was very excited to see me and quickly ran over to the table where I was sitting. Alexia recited the set of sight words five times with little mistakes. The most frustrating thing about going through the sight words was not having an eraser. First graders are always so picky about their pencils, and Alexia was one of them. She did not have an eraser so she was running frantically around the room trying to find an eraser. She would not listen to me when I asked her to sit down, which was very exasperating because I had asked her to calm down and sit down multiple times. After the fifth time of asking her, she finally obeyed.

The next station was the math station, which the students had to fill in the missing numbers to count to the number “100.” If the students were to finish early, they had a chance to play a board game. Alexia was one of the first ones to finish and it made me content that she was academically improving in her math because she did not need my help and she was confident in her answers. Alexia and her classmate both finished their worksheets early and had a chance to play the “Sum Swamp” board game. It was surprising that Alexia was sharing and taking turns rolling the die with her classmate because she usually wants to be the dominant student in the class. I was very happy to see Alexia sharing and being kind to her other peers.

The way the students are learning through the program “Brain Train” is similar to the production-line mentality that Sir Robinson provides to explain the education system. Students at Bailey Gatzert participate in the after school program Brain Train to improve their learning abilities and skills. They are taught in different groups according to their learning skills that illustrate the “batches” that Robinson also explains in his article. Some students learn at a faster pace than others, and Alexia is one of those students.