Courtney Lantz

SPED 510/511 Overview of Special Education Diversity Project

Pittsburg State University

December 7, 2018
 Introduction

General School Information

I am placed at George Nettels Elementary school located in the Pittsburg, Kansas USD

250 community. My cooperating teacher’s name is Ms. Faulkner and I have been observing my

target student in her kindergarten class. In Ms. Faulkner’s kindergarten class, she has 20 children

made up of 8 boys and 12 girls. The age group of these children range between 5 and 6 years old.

Building Report Card

Within my placement, I am located at George Nettels Elementary School in the Pittsburg

school district. George Nettels Elementary is made up of roughly 52% males and 48% females.

Total, there is about 372 enrolled. As my teacher and I talked she informed me of more data. For

the building of George Nettels Elementary, 83% of their student population is Caucasian. Only 6%

of the student population represent two or more races and less than 5% of the student population

is Hispanic, Black, Asian, Hawaiian Native/Pacific Islander or American Indian/Alaska Native.

Within this school about 132 children are eligible for a free lunch and about 28 children are eligible

for a reduced-price lunch. According to data, 45% of students at this school are coming from low-

income families.

Target Student Profile

At my placement, I observed two students; student A and student B. Both student A and B

are 6 years of age. Student A is a girl who is African American that comes from a single parent

home. Her mother raises her and her three younger siblings. Student A has a very loving

personality. She cares for her family, helps her mother take care of her three siblings, and treats

her peers and classmates with kind words. Student A struggles academically with focusing on
tasks, math and reading. She will confidently work in these subject areas listed, but she typically

will ask for help from the teachers during these subjects. Student B is a Caucasian boy with autism.

He comes from a family of a mother, father and an older sister. He is a very energetic boy and

loves sports. Specifically, he loves football. At different times working with Student B, he would

get off subject or see something that remind him of the sport and start to tell a story.

Date Time Hours

October 12, 2018 8:00am – 10:00am 2

November 7, 2018 8:00am – 10:00am 2

November 14, 2018 8:00am – 10:00am 2

November 28, 2018 8:00am – 10:00am 2

December 7, 2018 9:00am – 11:00am 2

Total: 10 Hours

Daily Entries

October 12, 2018

During this visit, I assisted both student A and student B in a writing activity. This

activity was teaching the students to think about the letters in the words they were spelling and

the phonological awareness of those words. Each student had to first trace the word that the

teacher was wanting them to focus on. By the end of this worksheet the students would have

written a complete sentence using the word they were studying. By doing this activity, student A
gained a better understanding of the formation of a sentence and the structure. This activity

helped increase her writing ability by challenging her to trace the main word of focus and write

the sentence by herself at the end.

When student B did this activity, they struggled more than student A. Student B

had some trouble focusing on the writing. With help from my prompting, student B was

able to get through writing the focus word and complete the other directions on the

worksheet. When it came to write out the sentence using the focus word, he started to get

frustrated and distracted. I helped prompt him when writing the sentence by asking him

guiding questions and helping him sound out the words he was writing to complete the

sentence. One thing I personally noticed that helped student B, was the teacher helping go

through the material on the worksheet with the class. In her classroom, the teacher has a

decent sized smart TV mounted on her wall. Using this she was able to cast the work she

was doing on her own worksheet so her class could follow along until they had to write the

sentence themselves. By watching his teachers work, student B was able to complete the

work sheet around the time other students did and write out his sentence for the teacher to

check. (B)

November 7, 2018

Both of my students, A and B, have lower motivation levels, but for different

reasons. Student A shows lower motivation in class because more than often the subject

area they are working on will be harder for them unlike other students in the class.

Because of the home life that she has, if I were the teacher, I would wonder if she is getting

any help at home from her parent. From my perspective growing up, I grew up with two

parents that worked with me on my struggles academically and made sure I had the right
resources to help me. Student A has a lot different upbringing than I did. She has more

responsibilities as a kindergartener today than others. Because of this, I try to help

motivate her while working on the subject areas that she struggles in by relating them to

something personal or an interest she has.

Student B also has a lower motivation level when it comes to academics. He doesn’t

have the same home life as student A, but because of his autism, he needs some motivation

from time to time. I personally think that building a relationship with a student will help

build trust between the student and the teacher and that can help them feel more

comfortable and confident in the classroom to perform their best in anything they are

learning. With that being said, I found out that relating interests of his to something we

were working on, helped motivate him to solve the problem. (D)

November 14, 2018

While visiting the class and my target students today, I had scheduled time during my

visit with my cooperating teacher to teach a math lesson to the students. This lesson covered the

topic of place value and was a very flexible activity. The goal of my lesson was to address what

the students knew about place value from the one’s place value to the hundreds place value.

When teaching the lesson, I worked with a group of 5-6 students. I made sure to include my

target students in different groups, so I could observe a focused understanding of each of their

learning.

Student A was in the first group of students I had. Student B was in the second group of

students. The activity of the lesson required students to toss baggies of 100 spiders, baggies of 10

spiders and baggies of 1 spider into the corresponding buckets labeled with the same place
values. Once the student, or group of students, tossed all their baggies, they would total up the

number of baggies scored in each place value column on a white board using tally marks. They

would then write out their number and combine them to make the whole number.

To include variety into my lesson, I knew I would have students who showed a

significant understanding of place value and also students who had little understanding of

place value. For students who had a better understanding, I had them work the activity

backwards. This required them to come up with a number no higher than 444 and see if

they could toss the amount of baggies for each place value into the correct buckets to equal

the number they made. For students who were not at that higher skill level, I had them

only work on numbers with place value up to the tens. Both student A and B had little

understanding of place value. One thing that I notice worked really well with my target

students and others, was adding the variety of ways to solve the problem to fit their

learning styles. Because I had that variety in my lesson, my target students (both A and B)

were able to solve the problem by working on only the tens and one’s place value. (E)

November 28, 2018

Throughout my time visiting my target students, I enjoyed getting to know them

and working with them. During the hours I was visiting the classroom, I was able to have

more experiences with my target students than just academic experiences. Both of my

target students sit at tables right next to each other in the classroom. This seating

arrangement allowed me to get to know them on a more personal level. Unless the class

schedule needed to get switched around, I was able to sit with my target students during

snack time. During this time the students are given a specific healthy snack and then they

are offered other options if they do not like the first snack. This time allowed myself and
my target students to get to know each other and build that relationship. I think it is

important spend time like this with your students because the students get to see you as a

person and a friend rather than just a teacher. With student B, I was able to talk to him

more and get him to tell me more about his interests. He told me all about his older sister

and his love for sports, especially football. Student A told me about her love for her

grandmother. I found out during this time that she stays with her grandmother a lot. She

adores her siblings and everyone in her family and I believe that she shows it in the

classroom to her peers and classmates. (F)

December 7, 2018

On my last visit the students were getting into the Christmas spirit by reading about

a gingerbread man. This book was presented by storylineonline.com. The teacher had the

class watch and listen to this story using the smart TV while they were sitting on the large

rug. When the story was done, the teacher stopped the video and prompted the students

with the question of “I would like you to raise your hands if you have a favorite part of the

story that you would like to share with everyone else”. Student A practiced quietly raising

her hand and waited to be called on. When the teacher called her name, she expressed and

elaborated on her favorite part of the story being when the fox ate the gingerbread man.

After most of the students had shared their favorite parts of the story, each student was

called upon to get the worksheet from the teacher and take it back to their seat to work on

independently. The students were told to illustrate a picture of their favorite part of the

story and then write a complete sentence describing their picture below. Student B was not

here on this day, so I was only able to work with student A. Student A easily illustrated her

picture to show her favorite part of the story. After she got done coloring her picture, she
started to write her sentence about her illustration. For this part of the reading activity, I

had to help by prompting her with questions that lead her to writing the sentence with a

capital letter at the beginning, correct spacing between words, and correct punctuation at

the end of her sentence. The skills just stated were not something that comes easy to this

student. By doing this activity she practiced reflecting on a story, comprehension, and

writing skills. (A)

Final Reflection

This project has showed me that my students in my future classroom will have many

different needs and personalities. No student is the same or learns the same in the classroom and

to be an effective teacher, we can not teach them all the same. This project and also past

experiences in other classrooms has taught me that important skill as a teacher. When I am

teaching in my own classroom someday, I will use this project as a reminder of that and use it to

help me with my teaching techniques as well.

After I had presented my lesson to my target students and observed my cooperating

teacher, I gained more confidence in my own teaching. No matter the lesson, activity, time or

place, I have always felt the least bit nervous before teaching something new to a set of students.

I believe that this project has helped me see my students differently and has given me insight to

new techniques and learning styles to use with my students who are struggling in different ways.

Since I completed this project in one of my final semesters at Pittsburg State University, I

have been able to tie-in a lot of past learning ideas from older classes and teaching techniques I

practiced this semester while helping my target students. When teaching my math lesson, it was

very beneficial to have a variety of ways for my target students and other students in my group to
solve the same problem. A course I took this semester introduced this, more into detail, and

helped me understand how students can still meet the objective of a lesson in different ways. My

experience in my major, Early Childhood Unified, has provided me with a better understanding

of working with students who have special needs. I believe this helped me when working with

student B because I understood a minimum of what his learning style could be like and how I can

accommodate my teachings to his style.

While working on this project I didn’t notice many concerns. I felt that my cooperating

teacher connected well with each of my target students and it was always clear that she knew

how to affectively manage her classroom. Student B always has a one-on-one para with him to

help him throughout the day. The only concern I noticed was myself when getting ready to teach.

As stated before, teaching something new to a new group of students or students with special

needs made me nervous. I feel that on some instructions I could have presented the material a

little clearer or addressed it differently. I plan to take this concern and learn from it so I can

improve on my confidence as a teacher in the future.