This past week, I had the pleasure of beginning my internship at Kentucky Avenue School after having spent the initial weeks leading up to the start of the internship planning for and prepping a new club to add to the pre-existing roster that Club KAS offers. We decided to give parents and guardians a two-week period to sign their children up for the poetry club which successfully began on 2/1 with three students who were eager to begin— two second-grade students and a third-grade student.
When I first walked into the school, I was greeted with the same kindness as I would be greeted with on subsequent visits, though this time, I was guided to the cafeteria where I gathered around a small table with all of my students. For this first poetry day, I brought markers, paper, and a stuffed animal of my own to help motivate students and offer an additional character to encourage engagement. I taught students about the different ways poetry can appear, and as an introduction so I could get to know my new students, I tasked them with creating an acrostic poem with their name after we created an example poem for my stuffed animal, Jerome. Each of the students actively offered their suggestions for each letter until we had finished with a poem that believed accurately described my stuffed animal. The students then completed their own poems and went on to make one for their own stuffed animals they had brought with them.
As an education major, my concentration is on Secondary English, so it has been a welcome challenge to design my lessons for students at the elementary level. Though, it has made me recognize some classroom management skills that can be transferred to younger thinkers and I am eager to learn strategies that I might be able to apply across multi-level thinkers. This club will continue to take once a week on Wednesdays while I assist around the school on Tuesdays during their designated Club KAS period.
Building Bridges 