Field Experience

1. How many hours did you complete? Five

2. In a short paragraph or bulleted list, how did you spend your time?
    I spent most of my time observing reading and writing instruction. Mrs. Baker used a variety of instructional methods to teach her students. Introducing them to vocabulary was crucial before beginning a new story so the students would have background knowledge before reading. They would repeat the words, give their own best definition and clap the syllable. Mrs. Baker said this was for sensory learning. The students did picture-walks through books and made predictions before engaging in guided oral reading. I used much of those same techniques during the lesson I taught to the students. The students worked with story elements, pointing out main ideas and supporting details with a read and reveal flip chart activity. They student used Vinn Diagrams to compare and contrast parts of the stories they would read. Mrs. Baker instructed them on Prefixes and suffixes. Some class time was used to take STAR Reading test to map how the students were progressing with their intervention instruction. While the students were testing, Mrs. Baker and I would discuss where they started and what kinds of intervention instruction was working best with them. After they finished, we would print out their scores and look at their growth charts and discuss how to keep them progressing at a good rate or what to do with those who weren't gaining as much ground as the others. 
 
3. How did the experience help you to strengthen at least one Kentucky Teacher Standard? (be sure to name the standard)
Completing this field experience helped me strengthen KTS #4: The teacher implements and manages instruction. During my observation, Mrs. Baker used direct and student-led instruction, sensory learning, guided oral and silent reading, Q &A, diagrams, charts, and hands-on activities to instruct the students. She divided the instruction between all these different methods to keep the students learning in new and fun ways. She chose methods that were very appropriate for the lesson topic of the day and I used much of what I observed in my lesson I presented to her class. 

4. Talk a little about one thing you learned because of this field experience. 
The main thing I learned during my observations was what a reading and writing specialist working with students on reading intervention does in his/her classroom on a daily basis. Intervention is a step in learning struggling students may go through before they are recommended for special education services. Intervention helps students catch up to the rest of their peers by offering the students extra attention and giving them a small student to teacher ratio for individualized learning. They follow closely with what their peers are doing in the general education classroom and test regularly to measure their growth whether it be positive or negative. I could see myself working as an intervention specialist because I would like the personal attention I could give students and feel pride in myself and them for learning the skills they were having trouble with.