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Field Observation

Jessica Brooks

EDU 203

CSN Online Campus

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In the general education classroom of Mrs. Yaeger’s class, I have gotten the opportunity

to observe a student that has an IEP. This student will be referred to as MS. Mrs. Yeager begins

the morning will have everyone line up outside of the classroom door and unload their

backpacks. In the hallway, the students have hooks to but their backpack on which they also have

an assigned number. The students take out their library books, folders, and any money or notes

that must be given to the teacher. Once the teacher has given permission the students enter the

classroom and put their folders in their personal mailbox. The students will pick up handouts that

are on the first table right by the teacher’s desk. I thought this activity was very interesting

because it allows the students to become independent with knowing what exactly is going home.

I enjoy that while the students are doing this Mrs. Yaeger is having minimal conversation with

them, allowing them to remember what is the correct procedures and allowing the peers to help

students who are struggling that morning. The student MS comes slightly behind the regular

classroom because he gets dropped off with the special education teacher and at times will eat a

quick breakfast with the class to practice social skills.

Once all the students have unloaded their backpacks and obtained their handouts they sit

on a rug to watch the morning announcements. Mrs. Yaeger yells “Alright students let’s get

RUG READY” and the children find their seats on the rug. When the morning announcements

start the children, all stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance and remain standing for the

remainder of the time. In my observation, MS is quiet and shows little interaction to the other

students. The other students around him will talk quietly from time to time, but must be

redirected towards the announcements by the teacher. In MS’s IEP it states that he does obtain

about thirty minutes of speech therapy per week to help develop him language more. During the

rug time the teacher goes over the day of the week, month and calendar. The students then count
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off one by one, at the end they subtract how many students they have in the class to how many

are present. On this day, there was only one student missing. Later a feelings lecture is added

where Mrs. Yaeger introduces a story where a student is feeling upset. In the story the students

become feelings detectives to find out what is wrong with their friend and why are they acting

weird. From this the class concludes that the friends are upset because they do not share. I

believe that during this story it is a good way to introduce what are the appropriate actions that

other students can take into why a friend is sad or upset. After the feelings story the class can

raise their hand and add a personal connection or story about the book. MS was the first one to

raise his hand where he shared a story about his father getting a ticket that morning and how it

made him very upset. In this demonstration, the IEP student showed great social skills that he did

not hesitate to be a part of the classroom activities and wanted to join in the group discussion.

This was the last thing that closed the morning meet up or rug time.

As the students continued to sit on the rug the teacher moved into letter names and

sounds. The students were told the letter and responded with the letter sound followed by a hand

imitation that helped them remember the sound. For example, for the letter “Z” the students

pretended to zip up their jacket while saying “zzz”. In this exercise, MS knew all the letter

names, sounds, and hand imitations just like the other students. Next was nonsense words where

the teacher would change the onset of the word and the class would correct her. For example, the

first word being fom, the correct word being mom. During this exercise, MS showed little

participation where he lost track of the words. Mrs. Yaeger did redirect him and slow her pace

down so that he could catch on the word rhythm. MS then caught back up with the class and later

lost track again where he waited for the students to repeat the correct word and he would follow

shortly after. A similar game was played where the teacher would say two words and if they
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started with the same letter then the students would stand, and if they started with different letters

the students would sit. Some words were like just and jacket. Many of these, MS did great in but

on the words, that started with “S” or “Z” he seemed to struggle on and wait for the class to

answer and slowly would copy them. I think that much MS’s general education time is about

copying the other students when he does not know the answer. I realized MS does not personally

do a lot of stim behavior that is common with children with Autism.

The last thing on the rug time was the sight words poem. On this week, the sight word

was “like”. The poem went something like this “I like ice cream. I like spaghetti. These are my

favorite things that I like! What do you like?” at the end of the poem there was a question asked.

The students then answered the question one by one as the teacher called on them. I enjoyed that

MS did contribute to the conversation. The students then grabbed their journals and sat at their

desks. Mrs. Yaeger did not have any assigned seating for the students, rather let them choose

where they would like to sit. This was a great idea to let the students choose their own seat

because then they can choose whether it was a good decision or not. This was important to let the

children become independent for what they were supposed to do. When the students were getting

the journal, MS became confused when he could no longer find his journal because it was miss

placed. Once we found the journal MS forgot the instructions and wandered the room to figure

out what the other students were doing. One student then helped MS find a seat and get to work.

MS had a difficult time staying on task because he had to cut out the sight words poem, glue it

into the journal, and circle the sight words. After each step the teacher had to redirect MS to stay

on task because he would stare off into space if he was not given a direct instruction. This was a

clear example that he had become prompt dependent and used to the special education teacher
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giving every single instruction multiple times. Once everyone was done with the journal it was

time to go to specials. MS joined the general education class at specials.

During special I got a chance to read over MS IEP. In MS’s IEP it is stated that he has

been diagnosed with Autism. In his IEP his major goals are to follow directions quickly and

efficiently, increase his social communication, increase his writing ability, count forward and

backward from 1-100, increase appropriate play skills, and read 52 letter sounds. I thought that

his IEP was interesting because much of the academic skills that are shown are at the same level

as his peers; however, his behaviors begin to act out when there is a change in the schedule that

he is so used to. On this day, he became noncompliant in going to library with Mrs. Yaeger’s

class because his typical special education class goes to P.E. on that same day and was unaware

of the change that he would go to specials with a different class. MS began to tear and refuse to

go to library because he wanted to buy a Gatorade from the P.E. coach. Luckily, we changed his

mind by compromising for him to by the Gatorade at lunch so he did not become too escalated,

and went to library. In MS’s goals, much of it is compliance based. In the self-contained

classroom where he does spend most of his day he becomes noncompliant if he is forced to share

a toy, or play with another kid, or do his work quickly after a break. During this time, the teacher

typically just waits him out and makes him miss all breaks until he has finished his folders.

Now, MS was back in from specials and came to the special education classroom. Each

student has a cubby with their name on it and in each cubby, there are different color folders that

signify what subject they will be working on. “Get your blue folders” said Ms. Tidwell. This was

the math folder for the students. In MS’s folder, he must draw the correct number of dots in a ten

block and practice writing and tracing of the number. He must finish the numbers one through

four. In other student’s folders, they range from matching numbers to quantities to addition and
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subtraction. MS struggles with writing the number three in the lines with all curves of equal

distance. Once the students have completed their folders they move on to a five-minute break

where they can play in the tree house, puzzles, and other toys that are in the classroom. At times

MS struggles to come back immediately when the teacher gives an instruction to sit down. One

thing that the teacher is focusing on to improve is for the teacher to give the instruction one time

and for MS to follow the it quickly and without protest. When MS protests to come back from

break he loses two or three minutes of the next break until he finishes his work. The following

folder is yellow where he must identify the letters and the sound that the letter makes. The

students finished the rest of their folders and cleaned up their desks. Time for lunch.

The students went to the cafeteria where the class spilt in half for them to get hot lunch.

The class sat at the front of the cafeteria. MS became noncompliant to sit down because he

refused to sit where the teacher told him to, that was not next to his two best friends. The teacher

was trying to make the child become flexible with change. As stated above MS has difficulty

with changing his activities once he gets used to a pattern. The both teachers try to change up

their schedules to allow MS to become more compliant and accept change. After lunch, the

children go to the playground for recess. Once recess is over the children go to the class room to

have social skills where they eat fruit snacks together and then watch Crawford the cat. During

the video the students use their motor skills to sing and imitate the activity that is shown on the

screen. The students do jumping jacks or lay on their backs and stretch to touch their toes. They

do this for about thirty minutes where MS does all the activities. I have noticed that MS does

exceptional during physical activities.

The special education class then goes to specials and MS goes back to the general

education class. At the end of specials MS joins the class back for one last snack and they all
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clean up the room and get ready to go home. Overall I think that MS learning difficulty is that he

hates when plans change. He loves the order of a schedule and struggles to be flexible with

change. I believe that with this the teachers do a good job with including him in class discussions

to increase his language skills, and catch him off guard by changing little schedules here and

there to force him to become compliant with change. I thought this was an excellent learning

experience that sometimes an IEP doesn’t focus completely on academic work, but on behavior

of a student that causes their learning to suffer.