Running head: FIELD EXPERIENCE REPORT 1
Field Experience Report
Randall Jones
Liberty University
Dr. Andrew Bruce
May 12, 2016
FIELD EXPERIENCE REPORT2
Field Experience Report
For my field experience, I am lucky enough to have a wife who is a teacher. I previously
worked in the school system, so my fingerprints and security info were already on file. Being it
was my wife’s classroom, I ended up with more hours than I originally had planned to do, but I
wanted to assist her with something I had designed to help with her assessments. Mrs. Jones
teaches first grade in a North Carolina public school setting. She has an inclusion classroom,
with three students who speak English as a second language (ESL), two Developmentally
Delayed students, two students who go to speech therapy, and one child who is diagnosed with
Bipolar Disorder.
Primarily, I worked with the students who were delayed, and the ESL students. I felt I did
not have the proper training to assist with speech or bipolar, who would need Tier III RtI help
[Kir15], but that I would be more useful with the others. In the morning, the students would have
work at their seats waiting for them as they arrived. This “brain warm-up” as my wife calls it,
gets them thinking and on task while everyone is settling in. After everyone is in their seats, they
come to the floor for calendar time. The students take turns pointing to the day of the week, and
adding the correct number/date to the calendar board. As a class, they would recite the phrase,
“Today is Thursday, April 14, 2016” or whatever date it happened to be. They were given their
center assignments, and would begin their independent work.
While doing independent work, my wife had me to pull a couple students at a time to
work with them. With the DD labeled children, we used flash cards to work on “sight words”.
There is an assessment to determine how many of these words the students know, with a goal in
mind of 150 by the end of the year. I did this every time I was in her class with these students,
and could tell that they are getting bored with the flash cards, so my mind began to start thinking
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of ways to help. After going through the flash cards, I would get a book that was on their level,
and we would take turns reading aloud. Both of these activities would be defined as Tier II in the
RtI Model [Kir15]. With 25 students in her class, this extra small group time seemed to help, and
I am sure a different face had them on their best behavior.
The ESL students came from three different cultural backgrounds. One student is
Hispanic, with Spanish as his native tongue. Another students was from a Filipino and Chinese
cultural background who spoke Mandarin, and the other student was from the Middle East, and
spoke Arabic. I used a series of flashcards with these students as well. However, these cards had
pictures and words on them, such as a picture of a desk, and the word “desk” on the card below
it. All three students could understand some of what I was saying, but could not speak much
English back to me. I believe that these children would benefit from the Picture Exchange
Communication System (PECS). If this system was in their school, I could have used it to help
put together small phrases for them. Luckily, they already knew how to ask to use the restroom,
and get water. Lunch choices were a picture of the menu item, and the words written beneath it.
The lunch menu is something that had always been in place in my wife’s classrooms throughout
the years. It is not only for students such as these, but for those who cannot yet read the words, or
are unfamiliar with the dish.
I thought that by reading a textbook, I knew the hardships that children with disabilities
deal with every day. However, until I spent time in the classroom with them, I did not really
understand how difficult it is. I wanted to help in any way I could, so I built 2 PowerPoint
presentations for her classroom. The slides for the first one are comprised of slides, with the list
of “sight words” typed individually on each slide, in the order on the master list. The students
can now sit at the computer, and click the mouse to advance to the next slide. This allows them
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to be involved with the activity. Also, as the slides would transition to the next, something would
happen, such as a fade, explosion, or wave animation. This seemed to keep their attention. I
basically did the same thing with the presentation with the ESL students, except I used words
they needed to know, with a picture slide to follow. Now, the proctor can sit with a list and check
off the words the student is familiar with, with the student click to the next word. My wife was
very pleased with this, because until then, they had to lay the flash cards in a pile of “known”
and “unknown” words, then count them, and go back and check them off the master list. While it
may not be a huge game changer for the future of education, there are at least five students and
one teacher that will benefit.
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References
Kirk, S., Gallagher, J., & Coleman, M. (2015). Educating exceptional children (14th ed.).
Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
