Aspen Wolfe

SPED 400
Domain 3: Lesson Reflections

Lesson 1 Reflection:

On January 11, I had the opportunity to administer a Daze. The DIBELS Daze is a three-minute
test that is given three times a year. It measures fluency and comprehension. Student responses are
timed for three minutes, and the stronger the reader is, the more items they will have the opportunity
to answer in that time. The students have 3-word choices they choose between and use one of the
words to fill in the blank. The scoring is done as # correct/ #wrong/2 and you round down.

One thing I noticed is that the more fluent a reader is, the better he or she is able to do on the
Daze simply because the student is able to decode the information they are reading more quickly. One
thing that would help is just giving students more opportunities to read. The more a student reads, the
better the automaticity is. We can also help students by giving them practice tests.

For example: https://usm.maine.edu/sites/default/files/smart/My_Side_of_the_Mountain_4-8.pdf

We didn’t get another deer until (run, breath, fall), so with the scraps I made (under, grab, big)
square pockets for food gathering. One (hung, very, need) in front of me, and the (only, other, this)
down my back. They were joined (in, part, by) straps. This device worked beautifully.

Lesson 2 Reflection:

The same day I was able to administer a written expression probe. I read the prompt aloud to
the students, gave them one minute to think about what they wanted to write, and then gave them
three minutes to write. Prior to them writing, I gave them a reminder to use capitals and periods.

Because this is a resource room, a lot of the students have accommodations. Some of the
students write their answers, some type, and others use voice-to-text for assignments that may be
longer.

There are a few ways to grade this type of probe: total words written, words spelled correctly,
and correct writing sequences. The first two are self-explanatory but the last one is a little more
complicated. When grading according to correct writing sequences, it is scored whenever two adjacent
units of writing are found to be correct in their punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and syntactical and
semantic usage.
 Aspen Wolfe
SPED 400
Domain 3: Lesson Reflections
For example:
http://www.interventioncentral.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/pdfs_blog/wright_Learning_Spark_Blog_29
_March_2013_Grs_1_5_Identfy_Writing_Difficulties_Instructions.pdf

Lesson 3 Reflection:

I taught my third lesson on January 18th. This group of students works from a curriculum called
Connecting Math Concepts. The group starts with some deep breathing to help them calm down before
the lesson starts.

The teacher copy of the book tells you what to write on the board, so I started by writing:

4 8 12 16 20

24 2_ 3_ 3_ 4_

This lesson has the students counting by 4’s. The teacher does it first, or me in this case, and
then I have the students repeat the answers together. Having this on the board helps them to not get
lost. Once they are more familiar with this, you may not need to say it first.

Next, I ask:

4+4= ? 4+3= ?

40+40= ? 40+30= ?
 Aspen Wolfe
SPED 400
Domain 3: Lesson Reflections
It can be helpful to explain to the students that they just need to add a zero to the end of their
first answer to figure out what the larger one is, but when I was asking them the questions, they didn’t
need the extra hint.

There was one thing in the textbook that I was unfamiliar with and it’s a certain way to write
word problems to help the students understand what number is the biggest, smallest, and if they need
to add or subtract. It looks like this:

Problem 1:

4 J M

Word Problem: Maria is 4 years older than Jason.

The largest number goes all the way to the right. The number goes at the beginning and the
other person left goes in the middle. Obviously, this doesn’t give enough information to find out Jason’s
age since it doesn’t say Maria’s age, but it is a good way to have the students practice where the
numbers are going to go.

Problem 2:

3 b W

Word Problem: The brown dog is 3 years younger than the white dog.

We know that the brown dog is the youngest, so it will go in the middle. The white dog is older,
so it goes to the right of the arrow, and the 3 is the number that we do know so it goes at the front.

Once these word problem examples were finished, I handed out the student workbooks and
notebooks, so they could work on independent work. I had to remember that independent work is just
that, independent. It’s hard to watch students struggle with a problem when I know how to help them
but sometimes we need to watch them struggle so we know what exactly they need help with. One
student needs help with the reading so I read the questions aloud to him. This is an accommodation that
is in his IEP.

Mrs. Nate hands out tickets after the students do something she has asked. This is a way to
reinforce positive behavior and keep them on task and motivated. In addition, if they are speaking out of
turn or having a particularly rough day, she’ll write tallies on the board and if the student gets 3 tallies
then he or she gets a referral and/or loses recess for that day.
 Aspen Wolfe
SPED 400
Domain 3: Lesson Reflections
Lesson 4 Reflection:

This lesson was done on the same day. This group of three works on Language Arts from the
Reading Mastery curriculum. They started out by using their workbooks to following the verbal
directions I gave them of North, South, East, and West.

The students have a grid in front of them with a starting point represented by a picture. I read
them an instruction like “move 3 steps toward the North” and they put an X in the box they land on.
One student would always count the box he started in so his answer would be one off and I would have
to remind him that where you start doesn’t count as taking a step.

This group also worked on deductions like:

All trucks are vehicles.

A dump truck is a truck.

So, a dump truck is a vehicle.

Another way that may be beneficial for students to learn about inductive reasoning, especially in
elementary school, is to start by telling a story.

For example: https://www.brighthubeducation.com/lesson-plans-grades-1-2/100945-three-deductive-

reasoning-activities-and-resources/

Jimmy has cookie crumbs and chocolate smeared on his face. Mom sees him and says, “Go to
your room, Jimmy! I told you not to have any chocolate chip cookies because they are for the school
bake sale." Jimmy tries to explain but Mom won’t listen.

It turns out that the neighbor brought Jimmy a cookie to taste because she used a new recipe.
Her cookies had chocolate frosting. If mom had noticed the other clues, she would have seen that part
of the frosted cookie was still laying on the flowered plate that the neighbor left for Jimmy. This is an
example of jumping to conclusions. The neighbor stops by to get the plate. Next time Mom will use
deductive reasoning!

Lesson 5 Reflection:

I taught this lesson to three students and it was a Language Arts lesson based on the Reading
Mastery curriculum. The lesson was on run-on sentences, subjects, and possessives.

For run-on sentences, I would read the sentence and if it was a run-on they would fix it up and if
it wasn’t then they would leave it.

Next, they had to fine the subject of the sentence and see if it fit with the rest of the sentence,
like the verb.

For Example: http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-subject-verb-agreement.html

My dog always growls at the postal carrier.

 Aspen Wolfe
SPED 400
Domain 3: Lesson Reflections
Non-Example:

My dogs always growls at the postal carrier.

We went over possessives next and I was able to explain the importance of an apostrophe. The
curriculum teacher book had students spell certain things aloud, like Tom’s. Students would say “T. O.
M. apostrophe. S.” Then, they would read the whole new sentence together after correcting what was
wrong.

Lesson 6 Reflection:

This reading group has three students and is my favorite group to teach because they’re all
well-behaved and good listeners. This group works out of the Decoding Strategies curriculum. They start
by getting an iPad and doing fluency recordings. They read a certain section of a story and count their
errors. They do this three times and record their best score in their workbook. They have a line drawn
that represents what their goal is for that trimester and I think it’s so important that they are able to see
how much progress they are making. Having students graph their own scores is a great self-advocacy
skill.

Once they finish their fluency recordings, this normally takes about ten minutes, they work in
their workbooks to answer questions about their reading. Some of the questions are related to what
happened in the story but other times I say a sound and they write down their answer.

Lesson 7 Reflection:

This group worked on Language Arts from their Reading Mastery curriculum. We worked on
making sure that the subject and the verb matched.

The students in this group each get a Chromebook to do their work. They are able to use
Google Drive to type out their answers for the questions and some of them are able to use talk-to-text
based on their accommodations in their IEP. Google Drive allows me to watch what each student is
typing and provide feedback by either going to them or creating a comment.

One thing that was really hard about this lesson was letting the students complete their
independent work independently. If I see students struggling, I immediately want to correct them so I
can help them understand that what they’re doing is wrong and why it’s wrong. But, I know that I need
to wait so I can see what level the student is at so I know how to best help them. It’s hard to sit back
while a student struggles but sometimes it’s necessary to understand the best way to help them
progress.