Olivia Rossbach

Intro to Special Ed: Anne Miller

Field Work Journal
April 14, 2014

March 28, 2014
Today was my first day of fieldwork at White Marsh Elementary. I am observing Stephanie
Stebbins who is the Special Education teacher who mostly works with kids who have learning disabilities
in math and reading. First thing in the morning she had a fourth grader named Isabella in her room
because she is below her grades reading level. Isabella read a story with Mrs. Stebbins then answered
questions. Mrs. Stebbins was very enthusiastic and patient, always willing to reread a question or
passage. Afterwards we did make up work with four 3
rd
graders. They had work in math and suffixes.
Mrs. Stebbins was patient when waiting for them to understand what they were being asked. Some
students had accommodations of using calculators. Then after that we IRIs and reading inventories to
see where some kids were at their reading levels. First was a boy named Caleb who was from 3
rd
grade.
Mrs. Stebbins asked him some questions about a story he read while Mrs. Stebbins took notes. Caleb
read well but he was a little slow when pronouncing words. He was able to correctly tell what the story
was about and recognize vocab words. After that the kids went to lunch. Mrs. Stebbins said that Caleb is
doing very well and that he is on grade reading level and maybe even a little higher.
April 4, 2014
My day started with my cooperating teacher having a meeting about assessments. A women
and little girl came in the room and the little girl was using a walker to walk. I watched as they worked
on reading. Her story was printed out with big pictures. She showed a lot of enthusiasm when the little
girl read words correctly. When Mrs. Stebbins came back, we went into a general education classroom
and worked one on one with a little boy while his class did math. He has a learning disability but also
doesnt get much support at home and the school thinks he may have some kind of emotional disability.
He read Mrs. Stebbins a book and practiced writing sight words. Afterwards Mrs. Stebbins checked in on
some students she normally works with then we went back to her resource room. Mrs. Stebbins is very
patient and organized when helping students and does whatever she can to accomplish a task. We
worked with two boy students who understood the phonic of words but when theyre in sentences they
get confused. One little boy stutters because he is overwhelmed with situations happening outside of
school but Mrs. Stebbins works very hard with all her students to give them any help they need. They
use a program called Read Naturally on a laptop to practice reading words. Afterwards, we went into
the 4
th
grade classroom and helped 2 boys work on history biographies. Mrs. Stebbins helped them fill
out worksheets on science also following the new PARC rules that she writes a run on sentence with n
capitals and the student goes back and fixes it. Before, the teacher would do all the spelling and
grammar correctly. I believe that this new way is better because it gives students more control and
teachers can better see them demonstrating understanding. After lunch, Mrs. Stebbins helped 6
students take a modified reading test. The test is a little easier and some incorrect answers are already
crossed out. Other accommodations the students have is the questions are dictated to them. After that
a new group of students practiced reading. To help them follow along the kids have a tracker which is
like a short ruler but the middle is see through so that the students puts that part on the sentence
theyre reading and wont get distracted.
April 11, 2014
Today was my last day at White Marsh with Stephanie Stebbins. This morning we worked with 2
students doing phonics and sight words. Afterwards, we went into a general education classroom to
individually help a student with math, continuing this back at her resource room with several students
from fourth grade. Then we did reading again and came to her room where I interviewed her. He is very
nice and knowledgeable about her job as well as enthusiastic to see kids progress. After lunch, we went
to 3
rd
grade to work with a little boy and then we brought 4 students back to the resource room to read
and answer questions. There is a girl named Maggie who tested below her grades reading level and the
parents are working on getting her tested for autism because her answers sometimes seem unrelated
an immature for her age. After that, Mrs. Stebbins worked with Xavier with fractions using the
interactive smart board on a website called Shepherds software. Xavier really can show understanding
of fractions this way and well as getting excited more then he normally would.