Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Journal Entry 1 - Sherlyn Aldas (11/24/09)

This past week, I have begun working in the Reach Out and Read program in the New York Presbyterian (NYP) Hospital with my mentor Emelin Martinez. On the first day, she introduced me to another volunteer and we began to watch a training video to help us learn how to interact with children according to age. After that, we left the NYP hospital and took a train to go to the Broadway Hospital, which has an extension of the Reach Out and Read program. Emelin taught us how to organize the books according to age group by labeling them with stickers. She also had us memorize what color stickers belonged to what age group. She also introduced us to nurses and doctors to get well acquainted by. Finally by the end of the day, we began reading to some of the kids who seemed to enjoy reading, especially after waiting in the hospital for long hours.

The second day, Emelin wasn’t there but she left me instructions to work on while she was busy. She instructed me to work on a poster for a book drive to be held in Washington Irving and also to see how many books needed to be stocked. When she returned, she told me that besides reading to children, she also wanted to make activities that go along with the story. I spent the rest of the time researching a couple of activities based on the books listed. After finding a couple of them, I printed them out and shared them with Emelin, who will be posting them with the children next week.

Finally, on Thursday, we began to label the books according to the age group with the help of two foster grandparents who were going to help me next week to read to the children. They told me about the several activities that they did with the children, such as reading with puppets and helping some of the older kids with homework. I am already familiar with these activities after working in the preschool internship so I think it would be easy to adapt to these concepts. I learned more about the labels and memorized which color represented which age group. Next week, I should be able to work with the kids.
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3 comments:

  1. Great Job Sherlyn! It looks like you learned quite a bit this week! When is the book drive going to take place? Will you just be taking new books or slightly used ones?

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  2. The book drive should be starting by next week, I'm working on the date because I need to speak to Ms. Wickham. Emelin will accept gently used books or new books, but it's most likely we'll recieve slightly used ones.

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  3. Wow, Sherlyn you have had a busy week!!Why do the children wait "long hours"?

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