Denyse Fiero ECED 343 December 3, 2011

Reflective Narrative: Service Learning Project:

INTASC and NAEYC Standard: INTASC Principle #10: The teacher fosters relationships with school colleagues, parents, and agencies in the larger community to support students' learning and well-being.

NAEYC Standard
2. Building family and community relationships 4a. Connecting with children and families 5. Becoming a professional

Process: The service learning project was implemented at Sussex Elementary in two of the kindergarten classrooms. First, we meet with the Service Learning Project Advisor to learn about school wide initiatives. One of the biggest needs is how to incorporate families into their students learning. There was also a need to assist the families with resources to help reinforce skills at home. We then met with our mentor teacher to discuss the biggest needs of the students in our classes. The needs that we decided to focus on were literacy and math. We decided to create 3 games for the children to play at home with their family. Two games were math based to increase their knowledge of numbers with counting and number order. The third game was a sight word fishing game. We also gave the caregivers color print-out of all the sight words in alphabet categories to help with emergent writing. Another resource that was included in our resource packet was a page of different math and sight word activities. To reach our second initiative which was to connect with the families we decided to implement our service learning project during American Education Week. We attended American Education Week and demonstrated the games to the parents and reviewed the resources with the parents that attended. Then the families were able to play the games with their students during center time. This was a great way to connect with the families and teach the parents how to use the materials. We also wanted to get data from the families about what resources they needed at home and get their assessment of the resources provided. We wanted to see if the resources provided were beneficial and if we needed to include other materials that will help them assist their children in learning. We provided a pre-survey for the parents to fill out during American Education week. We also included a post survey to find out if our resources were beneficial and how we could provide additional materials. Rationale: This activity lends itself to INTASC principle #10 and NAEYC standard 2 because of the strong
family and community focus. The Service Learning Project provides a relationship with the families of the school and provides resources to help with the support of student learning.

Reflection: The service learning project was an enriching opportunity for my teaching development. I was
able to connect with the student's parents/caregivers for the purpose of providing needed resources for additional support at home. The project was well received and most of the students use the supplied resources daily. I feel I was able to contribute to these families and really make a difference the student's education.

Relationship to teaching/learning: The student's were impacted by the project by receiving educational
games and resources to benefit their learning. This project was positive for the parents/caregivers because they received valuable fun activities to engage their children at home.

Denyse Fiero ECED 341 December 3, 2011

Service Learning Project: Providing additional resources The service learning project was implemented at Sussex Elementary in two of the kindergarten classrooms. First, we meet with the Service Learning Project Advisor to learn about school wide initiatives. One of the biggest needs is how to incorporate families into their students learning. There was also a need to assist the families with resources to help reinforce skills at home. I and another student teacher decided to take both of the initiatives and incorporate them into our service learning project. We then met with our mentor teacher to discuss the biggest needs of the students in our classes. The needs that we decided to focus on were literacy and math. We decided to create 3 games for the children to play at home with their family. Two games were math based to increase their knowledge of numbers with counting and number order. The third game was a sight word fishing game. The game included all 40 sight words that the students are required to know. The student fishes for a sight word and must say the word to keep the word. This game helps with the kindergarten objective to learn all sight words introduced. We also gave the caregivers color print-out of all the sight words in alphabet categories to help with emergent writing. Another resource that was included in our resource packet was a page of different math activities that the family can do together to increase the students knowledge of math. A page of sight word activities were provided as well to give different fun way to learn sight words. All of the activities in math and sight word resources were ideas that they could recreate with house hold items. To reach our second initiative which was to connect with the families we decided to implement our service learning project during American Education Week. We attended American Education Week and demonstrated the games to the parents and reviewed the resources with the parents that attended. Then the families were able to play the games with their students during center time. This was a great way to connect with the families and teach the parents how to use the materials. We also wanted to get data from the families about what resources they needed at

home and get their assessment of the resources provided. We wanted to see if the resources provided were beneficial and if we needed to include other materials that will help them assist their children in learning. We provided a pre-survey for the parents to fill out during American Education week. We also included a post survey to find out if our resources were beneficial and how we could provide additional materials. We received a few pre-surveys from the parents which all welcomed additional resources. We asked three questions on the pre-survey. The first question was if the parents felt they had enough resources at home to enrich their childs education. We asked if they felt comfortable helping their child with homework? We also asked what your childs favorite academic home activity is. We only received three pre-surveys but their information was helpful. The caregivers welcomed additional resources and one survey stated they would like help teaching their child sight words. This pre-survey helped us to learn that our resources were beneficial. Unfortunately, we only received one post survey from both of the kindergarten classes. The survey stated that all the games were beneficial to their child. The said that the Go Fish Sight Word game was the game their child enjoyed the most. They felt that this game helped their child recognize the words more easily. The parent said that their child will use all the provided resources in the future and would welcome additional resources. This information was helpful to know that the resources were helpful and to see what type of games worked the best. This data also helped with the decision to continue using the Go Fish sight word cards as a year round resource. The mentor teacher will print out future sight words to add it to the game to extend the students learning.