Personal Reflections – 31 March
| | Before Service Activity | During Service Activity | After Service Activity |
| Alone | I didn’t feel especially psyched up this session, even though I knew it would be fun later with a kid like Dana. But I still felt glad that after my cca I was able to distress myself. | It was during the session that I began to be hyperactive. I was glad that Dana remembered what I said last session and read the back of the book before she actually chose it. She is also able to use pictures to predict what was going to happen, or what was happening. | I was also happy that her mum listened to my advice and did not borrow as many books as before. Instead, she borrowed a book that was slightly more difficult and quite thick. Instead of reading 20 over simple books, Dana could read 1 thick and good book. |
| | Before Service Activity | During Service Activity | After Service Activity |
| Alone | Before the session started, I had many thought running in my mind. I was particularly frustrated as I did not know which book to ask her to read to me. Dana always chooses books that are quite simple for her age, yet she does not have the courage to explore books with greater difficulties. | During the session, I also felt quite frustrated as Dana was very mischievous and did not answer my questions. I was at a lost too as she did not want to read to me, and when I was reading to her, she did not pay attention to me. After which, I decided that we should engage in an activity where we will create a story slowly, saying one sentence each. I was glad that this was quite successful in spite of her needing prompting from me. | I felt happy as I felt that being flexible salvaged the session which could have gone much worse. After this session, I feel more confident and I trust myself that I would be able to handle similar situations in the future, which will be especially handy in phase 2 and 3 where we will be expanding our project. |
| | Before Service Activity | During Service Activity | After Service Activity |
| Alone | Today, I am having the “I don’t really care” attitude as it is very hard to get Dana to stop disobeying me. I am not angry at her though, as I know that when I was young I behaved that way too. That being said, it is quite mentally exhaustive to handle mischievous kids and it is hard not to feel the same way as I do. | I was really surprised that I actually got Dana to behave. Also, she remembered what I told her for the past few sessions and started reading the back cover of the book. She asked me some questions regarding vocabulary and we also had quite a lot of interaction. | It felt great since it was clear now that I had the ability to get her to listen to me. I also realized that she is lazy to think, which is good as compared to before when I thought that her proficiency in English was not that great. If she is willing to try, she is able to pronounce harder words and also answer my questions with inference from the passage. |
| | Before Service Activity | During Service Activity | After Service Activity |
| Alone | I was feeling much better this session as I know that Dana can behave if I talk to her nicely. Also, since we are going to start on the flashcard games, I believe that she will concentrate more on the session and have fun. | I believed that this session was very beneficial for her. I was happy at the fact that she was able to recognize many of the words that I obtained from the internet. This is testimonial to her proficiency in English even though she comes from a supposedly “dysfunctional family” | |
| With fellow students | | It was good that we were doing as a group and especially so since one pair of siblings are unable to read. We were able to help each other out and point out the mistakes we made. We also made some situations less awkward like in a case where one of us is unable to think of a sentence with the word on the flashcard on the spot. | |
| | Before Service Activity | During Service Activity | After Service Activity |
| Alone | It is great that I will be able to resume the reading program with Dana as I am afraid that after 3 weeks she will not remember what I have taught her for the past few sessions. Since it is after her exams, I believe that she will be in a happier mood and will enjoy the reading program more | Fortunately, Dana has a good memory and recognizes most of the words on the flashcards. This means that I will be able to prepare a new set of flashcards for her and help her improve on her English even more. | It was great to know that I had such a great student under me. I believe that with a little more effort put in, Dana would be able to rank first in her class |
| | Before Service Activity | During Service Activity | After Service Activity |
| Alone | I believe that after today’s session, the way we are going to conduct our programs in future would be very different. Today’s session was also a reminder to why we started out this project in the first place. It definitely fuelled my desire to launch phase 2 of our project | ||
| With fellow students | | I believe that we had a great time today. We decided not to read today and instead, we played games which would help improve their command of English and make them think outside the box. It was much more fun than expected and definitely much more fun than reading | This is a session to be remembered as we had a ball of time. Something we learnt today is that our program can be fun and interactive and be beneficial to the kids at the same time. |
| | Before Service Activity | During Service Activity | After Service Activity |
| Alone | As jubilated as I was, I was also disappointed by the fact that Dana was reading “kiddy” books. However when I realized that her brother, Joshua, had the same problem too, I realized that I had to discuss this with Chervin and feedback it to their mum. | After voicing out our thoughts to their mum, we realized that Dana and Joshua were somewhat lazy during some sessions. We hope to fuel their passion for reading next session so that they would be able to benefit from the program. |
| | Before Service Activity | During Service Activity | After Service Activity |
| Alone | I was quite frustrated because Dana was not cooperative today. However I should shoulder some of the blame too because there has not been any “breakthrough” in the program for a few weeks already. When she was doing silent reading, I took the time to ponder on how I could improve the program for the following weeks | I managed to come up with some ideas and I planned to share them with my group mates. I believe that after some tweaking it would be good enough to incorporate into our reading session and hopefully this would help us make our next “breakthrough” |
