Giving a first reading

Danette Goulet

COSTA MESA - Their small cherub faces shined with glee at each word

and sentence they successfully read.

“Woo-hoo,” exclaimed Victor Ramirez, 7, after reading a sentence

without a mistake.

The group of students in Megan Lord’s first-grade class at Pomona

Elementary School cracked their first “real” reading book, with multiple

stories and a workbook Monday morning.

Even the table of contents, with its list of four stories and the

pages where they began were cause for excitement.

“100 Mrs. Lord,” shouted Jose Loya, announcing the page number where

the fourth story started.

Jose was clearly astonished that his book even had that many pages --

let alone that a story began on that page.

So the keyed-up group began the first story: “Clap your hands.”

“Clap your hands. Stomp your feet,” they read.

Lord told them to show her “clap your hands,” then “stomp your feet.”

“Like a doggie that’s running,” Jose piped up as he stomped his feet.

“Sort of,” she answered.

As they went on to “shake your arms,” I wandered around the classroom

where the other first-graders were working independently.

Since the class is visiting the Green Meadows Farm at Irvine Park

today, most of the tasks were farm-related.

A group of students at the art center were learning step by step how

to draw farm animals.

They drew pigs, bunnies, chickadees and turkeys.

In keeping with the farm theme, other students were learning about

plants in their science unit.

So those students who were not drawing farm animals colored in

pictures of four stages of a sunflower, from a planted seed to a

blossoming flower.

Then they cut out the pictures and pasted them on a paper in the

proper sequence. Underneath the pictures students wrote a story about how

a sunflower grows.

A few students also took turns using the class computers.

As I looped back around to the reading group I was just in time to

hear them finishing up the story and all chatting about which story they

wanted to read next.

* IN THE CLASSROOM is a weekly feature in which Daily Pilot education

writer Danette Goulet visits a campus within the Newport-Mesa Unified

School District and writes about her experience.