Dear Mrs.

Betley, June 29th, 2016

Thank you for allowing me to come visit you in your Special Education classroom on

June 29th. I appreciate you being willing for me to come in and learn more about you and your

students. In my visit, I noticed so many great things that you are doing with your students and

want to commend you for your hard work and efforts. I also have a few follow up questions or

things to think about going forward in order to help you be the best teacher you can be.

I think its great that when students are expressing frustration and acting out you offered

choice to them to direct them to their better self. You did this with Justin when he came in and

made cat hisses at you and also with other students throughout your lesson. I can tell that you

have built relationships with your students and have invested time and energy to learning their

names, things about them as well as really knowing about their disability. To engage your

students and get them excited about their learning, I love that you use music as a gateway to

transition students and allow for a music stretch break. This is a great way to connect with

students but also to allow them to give them brains a break, which research shows (Zepeda) is

a great for the brain by bringing oxygen to the brain and allowing students to focus better.

A question that I have is, how can you tell that students are progressing socially towards

their ESY Summer School goal? What evidence shows you this and how do you track this data

and evidence? Something to consider is the equity that you call on students. I noticed that you

have a few very active and engaged students who get called on a lot and going forward working

on engaging all students and giving voice to the quieter students would benefit your classroom.

Again, thanks for allowing me into your classroom. Please let me know if I can further

assist you in your classroom or if theres a time in the future youd like to welcome me back in

your classroom to look for any specific pieces of student learning and engagement.

AmyEngler
Dear Mrs.Welters, June 30th, 2016

Thank you for allowing me to come visit you in your ELL classroom on June 30th. I

appreciate you being willing for me to come in and learn more about you and your students. In

my visit, I noticed so many great things that you are doing with your students and want to

commend you for your hard work and efforts. I also have a few follow up questions or things to

think about going forward in order to help you be the best teacher you can be.

You are a talented teacher and use many different strategies in teaching to teach to the

lesson's objective. I think its a great strategy to put the words on the board as youre reading

that the students have difficulty with so that they can see them and learn the pronunciation.

When it came time for students to pair up and answer the question, What Olympic sport would

you compete in?- I liked that students paired up to talk about their answers. To take this

further, could they first draw their answer to process before sharing out?

When students were reading about ancient time and learned about Ancient Greece and

the Olympics I like that you showed the video of the current Olympics. A question that I have is,

how do you know that students know what the Olympics are? What if you picked pictures of

Olympic teams from their own home countries to use as examples as a segway- this would help

kids connect to the content and show that you are interested in their culture and the country that

they are from. When asking students if theyve seen the movie Gladiator, I would be curious to

know what the rating of the movie is and if in their home countries this movie came out for

viewing.

Again, thanks for allowing me into your classroom. Please let me know if I can further

assist you in your classroom or if theres a time in the future youd like to welcome me back in

your classroom to look for any specific pieces of student learning and engagement.

AmyEngler
Dear Mr. Suhr, June 28th, 2016

Thank you for allowing me to come visit you in your Gifted and Talented classroom on June 28th.

I appreciate you being willing for me to come in and learn more about you and your students. In my visit,

I noticed so many great things that you are doing with your students and want to commend you for your

hard work and efforts. I also have a few follow up questions or things to think about going forward in

order to help you be the best teacher you can be.

I saw a lot of great things happening in your classroom and applaud you for your hard work and

dedication to create dynamic lessons to engage the students that you have. I noticed that the students

were highly motivated and with the gradual release of responsibility, were able to excel at the creation of

their own webpages. My question is, what type of scaffolding or teaching happened before my

observation to get them to this point. I loved the idea that each student could take their own interest and

create a webpage based on their own interests. Will students be able to learn and grow from each other

and share out what they have done for their projects?

A question that I have is wondering how we can bring students of various cultural and racial

backgrounds to access this great course. Im curious if there is scholarship money available to help

sponsor students who financially arent able to afford this course on their own and if so, how we can bring

attention to this as an option. I love that the students have a tangible product that at the end of their

course are able to proudly take with them as a completed work. What would a iWeb Version 2 course

look like? Could this be something to consider in the future as students finish this course they would be

able to sequence into the next course to continue to learn and develop their webpage?

Again, thanks for allowing me into your classroom. Please let me know if I can further assist you

in your classroom or if theres a time in the future youd like to welcome me back in your classroom to look

for any specific pieces of student learning and engagement.

AmyEngler