For both my observed and unobserved lessons I gave one-on-one instruction to the same

student, on letter recognition. I have worked with K (student name for this paper, not his actual

name) for many weeks so I have created a relationship with him, and he knows the behavior and

work expectations when he comes to the resource room. K is in first grade and this is his first

year coming to school. He is always eager and willing to work, he once said “I like coming to

school, I’m always happy at school”. He comes from a lower socioeconomic status and receives

breakfast and lunch services, so I quickly learned to make sure he actually ate breakfast and if he

needed anything. I did a baseline assessment with K in February since they had just started in

person classes, we found out he could not identify 20 of the 26 letters, so we started to give

instruction on letter recognition and sound.

Each Day I would go (two days a week) we would work on a letter. For my first lesson

we focused on the letter K, which he loved since his name starts with k. It was really cool when I

first told him that we were practicing K he said “my name starts with k, but doesn’t sound like

k”, that fact that he could differentiate between the different sounds the letter makes, was

awesome. Prior to this lesson I was doing mostly verbal instruction,me talking to him, but for

this lesson I tried to get him to say the letter and its sound, practicing the most as possible. K

practiced writing the letter, then made a mini book and finally did a letter search. During the

lesson he started to look around the room and point out the letter K. This lesson went excellent,

but I do think a lot of that is because this was one of the letters he identified during baseline

assessment.

For the second lesson we focused on the M. The lesson I gave was similar to the first.

After working with K for a few weeks, I found that repeating the letter and its sound as much as

possible really helped him remember each letter. During the lesson I would continually ask him
what sound the letter made and what letter it was we were working on. From working with K in

the past I knew that he had a hard time remembering the letters even if we were working on the

letter right then and there. During this lesson I included making statements like “do you anyone

whose name starts with M?” or “I know something that starts with M, mom! You said you spent

the weekend with your mom!”. Including statements like these helped when K with recall. When

practicing writing the letter, after writing all the capital M’s and then lower case, I would have

him pick which one he thought was his best. This was honestly one of his favorite parts of the

lesson, he would get so excited to show off his best work.

After teaching both of my lessons, there are a couple things I would have changed. K has

a lot of energy, as most first grade boys do, so I think incorporating some kind of movement may

help him. I really think having him up and moving around would not only help get some of his

energy out, but also help him recall the letters later on. I also think reading books that are

designed around each letter would have helped him see each letter in context. Most of the time I

worked with K, I used worksheets my mentor teacher gave me, from a specific program. This

was a unique situation, since K has not officially been identified as needing special education

services or an IEP. I do believe that he needs more trier two or trier three, inorder be successful

right now.

K comes to the resource room 2-3 times per week to work on his letter recognition. As far

as I know he also receives some pull out services for math. Seeing how my mentor teacher

scheduled when students would come to the resource room, was a great learning experience. She

has about 20 students on her caseload. Some she sees every day, others only once per week. The

students' needs range from behavioral and social/emotional to every academic area. With her

paraprofessional and herself, they either work one on one or in small groups, in 30-90 minute
sessions. I worked mostly one on one with students, which I really enjoyed. I think I thrive

working with students one on one, I am able to create a relationship with them, and they open up

and are really willing to work with me.

Working with K this semester was probably one of the most eye opening and

transformative placements I have had. Every day when I went to his general education first grade

classroom, he was excited to come with me. He was always talking about what he did that

weekend, or what was going on at home. He has a lot going on at home and from what he has

shared with me, it is pretty unstable and inconsistent at home. At the beginning of my placement

he shared that he’s happy at school but not always happy at home. He was also aware that he

struggled to read and identify numbers, but that never held him back to working hard at

everything we did. On my last day at my placement we were talking about what we were looking

forward to this summer, swimming, playing outside and no school. But K said yes he was

looking forward to those things but, “I just can’t wait til I learn how to read” and I asked, what

are you going to do when you learn to read, he replied “well you can do anything when you can

read”. This 6 year old, is the most motivated and hard working student I’ve ever worked with.