School is back in session! The first session of volunteers is off to a great start with their education rotation. The volunteers start their day off singing with the UKG kids (Kindergarten Age). The UKG students came to the Peery Matriculation School three weeks ago with slim to no understanding of English, and with the volunteers help they have been able to learn several phrases. These include, “What is your name?”, “I am studying UKG,” and “I am 6 years old.” For UKG English time we are using Reading Horizons, a reading program aided by Reading Horizon’s Heidi Hyte.

I have seen the Reading Horizons program help the UKG children tremendously in their learning of the English language. Sabari, a boy from UKG, has excelled in the sounds and names of the alphabet letters ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘D’, ‘F’, and ‘G’, as well as the slides ‘ba’, ‘da’, ‘fa’, and ‘ga’. He has learned the difference between the letter ‘b’ and the slide ‘ba’.

Carrie Gaykowski and Sathya A.

The volunteers have helped in the library, reading one-on-one with each one of the standards. The one-on-one time gives each child a chance to focus on their reading individually. One volunteer, Carrie Gaykowski a mom of three, told me how she loves reading with the older children one-on-one, and said,

“it’s really cool to see how advanced they are and the progress that they have made.”

–Emily Hashey
Education Coordinator (USA) 

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