Clinical Field Experience A: Observations, Data, and Pre-Assessment

I collaborated with my mentor to identify a group of three students with varying abilities in the classroom who need extra literacy support. I spent time observing these students this week during their literacy block for three small group lessons and three whole group lessons over three days. 

During my observations, I took note of each student’s behavior, participation, learning style, literacy strengths and weaknesses, learning challenges, social interactions, distractions, perseverance, stamina, and motivation. These observations are all included in the Literacy Work Sample.

AD will need further screening for a visual processing disorder such as dysgraphia. However, for this project, the targeted extra literacy support is going to be for her lagging phonemic awareness skills.

While I observed during the literacy block, I found that if WC was given extra time to process information or instructions were presented in an alternative way, he could complete the task. His extra literacy support may be additional phonemic awareness instruction, or it could be an alternative assessment.

LD struggles during the whole group phonemic awareness lessons. He does not have the stamina to maintain focus for the entire ten-minute lesson. Because of this, he is falling behind in his phonemic awareness skills. A one-on-one or small group-focused lesson may meet his needs better.

Because of how late we are in the year, the amount of instruction these students have received, and the mountain of research to support the importance of phonemic awareness, these students were selected for their lacking phonemic awareness skills. These students are progressing phonologically. They have a knowledge gap in some phonemic awareness skills. This gap should be filled with some explicit targeted instruction, allowing the students to have a solid literacy foundation to continue building on, hopefully without the need for further intervention. The school data team had already decided to administer three phonemic awareness assessments, onset sound, ending sound and rhyme production,  for upcoming progress reports. The data gathered from those assessments will be used to guide instruction.