Students: [speaking Spanish]

Sarah: We try to make reading and literacy fun or joyful, and also make it feel meaningful and hands on through our Reading Buddies program. It builds relationships, it builds literacy skills, in a way that is personal and close.

Caroline: We are a bilingual and biliterate school. Reading Buddies is a K through eight practice where specific grades are linked with others to form a longitudinal relationship that’s both academic and personal.

Sarah: Our older students come down and read to our younger students. It is very meaningful for a thirteen, fourteen year old to come and read a story to a seven year old, and share their experience, being in the same school, and their experience learning how to read in two languages.

Caroline: [speaking Spanish].

We meet once a month. The first reading buddy session is in English, the second in Spanish, and we alternate going through the school year. There’s a lot of prep that goes into the process with the older buddies. Today, what we’re going to be talking a little bit about is all the strategies that they use for vocabulary, words in context, using illustrations, cognates between English and Spanish.

Lamaya: Today in class, we’re reading our books and picking out any word that our reading buddy might have trouble reading, and then finding a way to describe it, so then our reading buddy won’t be as confused. And once you’re done with picking out the word, then you would read to a classmate, to make sure that you are fluent in reading the book.

Caroline: The goal is always to establish a safe and fun relationship between the older reading buddy and the younger reading buddy. So we talk a lot about not only skills, but strategies for students. If you have a struggling reader as a reading buddy, there is a strategy called echo reading, where you read and then you ask them to repeat it and to follow it, and you can use your finger to follow the letters and the words. If you have a buddy who at a more developed reading level, then you can take turns, you can pause for inferencing, you can focus on vocabulary.

Sofia: She helps me so that I can learn the word, and she doesn’t just tell me it.

Caroline: I notice that the younger reading buddies no longer see the sixth, seventh and eighth grade students as these gargantuan bodies that are intimidating, but rather as a name and face and a friend, an ally at school. For the older student, it’s a reminder of their younger selves. So there is this empathy that develops and also the sense of, I’ve gone so far.

Luis: The younger kids don’t feel scared to interact. When I was little, I was kind of scared to interact. But then I learned over the years that they’re just people like us.

Sofia: I think that having a reading buddy that supports you and helps you learn to read is a good thing.

Schools That Work

Amigos School