Reflection of Field Experience

How many hours did you complete?

I completed 5 hours of field experience.

In a short paragraph or bulleted list, how did you spend your time?

I spent most of my time collaborating with other professionals about reading; I had a meeting with my Vice Principal and Psychologist to discuss specific interventions and goals for the students in Reading and other subjects as well.  Since second grade is a big reading year, a lot of the discussion was on this- how to reach your struggling readers and how to push those reader’s that are excelling.  I also met with my team for 2 hours and we discuss the upcoming week’s agendas and plans.  We actually discussed a Junior Great Books to go with the class.  We discussed higher order thinking questions to go along with our discussions.  We shared various articles that we found that go along with our Social Studies and Science standards as well.  Lastly, I gave a lesson that was observed by another teacher that is at the school.  She gave me feedback on strengths and weaknesses of the lesson.

How did the experience help you to strengthen at least one Kentucky Teacher Standard? (be sure to name the standard)

The standard that I worked on throughout this field experience was definitely Standard 7: The teacher reflects on and evaluates teaching and learning.  In all of the meetings, the discussion was about how to get ALL students in the class to learn and progress in Reading.  We discussed the interventions and strategies that we were using with each student and discussed if they were working or not. There were some situations where I had to go back and say, “Ok, this is working for Student A but I have to try a different approach with Student B.”  These are all great conversations to have to better you as an educator.  Also, it is important to use the ideas of others at your school that may have some creative ideas that have worked for them.

Talk a little about one thing you learned because of this field experience.

Mainly I learned the importance of data and differentiation.  Each student has a goal that you want to set for them personally and the ways to reach it can look so different per child.  While one child may be excelling on the intervention that you are using, another can be struggling.  You have to spend time to truly figure out what the individual students’ needs are and then find ways to get them to grow academically.