Â鶹ӰԺ

1st Place Winner

Post 1:

I have now been to the boulder public library twice and reading buddies is in full swing. Two weeks ago, I went to the orientation session and learned a lot about what each session with my little buddy will look like and all of the activities we will take part in. I had never been to the Â鶹ӰԺ public library prior to the orientation session and I was amazed by the modern design and intricacy of this building. I left the orientation session feeling excited and eager to meet my buddy, find out their likes, see their reading skills, start helping them create their own story and overall, be a positive role model in their life.  

I was sitting in class on Tuesday with Jordyn, my friend who is also a reading buddy and we were thrilled when we got the email that our reading buddies were siblings. We excitedly walked through the snow to my car and headed there. Side note, as we were walking in, we saw a woman try and park her car and hit another, whoops.  

Soon after we got there, the reason we're all actually here came, I met my buddy Meadow. Meadow immediately had a big smile on her face and interacted actively during group time. We did an interview sheet where we were both able to learn about each other and I got a lot of insight on who Meadow is and what she likes to do. She goes to Columbine and is in second grade, she lives with her mom, dad and brother, Miles, who is also a reading buddy. She loves to read, especially girl super hero books and that is what she chose for us to read together. I was pleasantly surprised with her reading abilities and am excited to see where these next couple of months take us!

Post 2: 

I am in the reading buddies program at the Â鶹ӰԺ Public Library and my buddy is Meadow. She is a sweet second grader, full of personality and a passion to read and learn. Since week 1, I have been so impressed with her reading abilities but as the weeks have progressed, I have now become so impressed with her creativity while writing her own book. From the moment she found out that we would be writing books, her eyes lit up and she could not stop talking about her ideas. We are in the process of writing the book "Pig the Pug and Pug the Poodle". I would say our biggest struggle while writing the book is trying to keep those names straight, haha! Since Meadow has been a relatively focused and passionate buddy, I pushed myself on how I could help her grow and how we could strengthen her reading skills and passion. One way we have done this is by expanding the style of books we read. In the beginning she would automatically gravitate towards superhero books and comics; while those were fun to read, I think it is important to expand your horizon and she has been so open to that. We have picked out more challenging books with less pictures that she has like always, exceeded my expectations when reading. I have been focusing on asking her questions while we read and getting her to think deeper while reading. I have loved this program and I am so sad it is ending early. I hope I get to see Meadow again one day.   

Post 3: 

Walking into this program, I honestly had very little idea of what this was going to be like. I went to the orientation and very soon after, I got to meet my buddy,  Meadow. The time we spent together, although cut short, was awesome and I am pretty sure she left a bigger impact on me than I did on her. From the first day, I realized that I was not going to have to encourage her to read or have fun- she always had that attitude exploding out of her. I often wondered how she still had that much energy after a full day of school but I loved that she pushed me to be energetic and show her how exciting this opportunity was for both of us. I made a goal to myself to try and help her in some way. Although she was an extraordinary reader, especially for her age, I wanted to model what good reading sounded and looked like and I wanted her to expand her book variety. 

From very early on, I learned that Meadow loved superhero books, especially the ones with girl superheros! While those were certainly fun to read, I wanted to push her to try something new because you never know what else is out there that you may love. I think this is not only an important lesson for reading and genres of books, but I hope it is something she carries with her for the rest of her life. It is important to not just stay in your comfort zone, where you know you will enjoy it, but push yourself to find new hobbies and new interests. That is exactly what we did and Meadow now enjoys comic books, Dr. Seuss' rhymes and many other books we discovered. Breaking out from superhero books also allowed her to expand her vocabulary and read different styles which I would say was a great accomplishment. 

My other goal was to model what good reading sounded and looked like. She could fly through a book, reading all of the words pretty much perfectly at the first session but there is a lot more to reading than just saying the words. I began asking her questions about the pictures and about the words she had just read. This pushed her to really comprehend and be curious about the books she was reading. A strategy I used to model what good reading sounded like was we would alternate pages. This gave her a chance to hear someone reading the words at a good pace and pausing at commas and periods. She was able to know when a question or an exciting statement was made by the intonation of my voice.  

Overall, I just wanted Meadow to see an older college kid who genuinely cared and wanted her to have fun and enjoy learning. I remember when I was young, I totally wanted to model the "big kids" I was around and I aimed to be a good role model every Tuesday. This was my first semester participating in LING 1900 and I would love to participate in this program again.