Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Observation 4
Observation 4
Observation 4
Jeremia Vergara
I. Observation #4
Teacher-taught lesson (Morning Meeting)
III. Setting
Facility of the classroom is in an urban town. The school is public and specializes
specifically in early childhood care and education. This classroom has a main teacher,
two to four assistant teachers and seven students.
IV. Pre-observation
Teaching a child with special needs would require a great deal of patience
and kindness, as any teacher would need to be successful in the classroom. The
thought of special education never crossed my mind until this year. From having
an autistic nephew, I knew only a small portion of what happens in his school
day. The minds of these children are unique. I believe they think more abstractly,
seeing as how some like to organize things depending on shape and size to always
wanting to follow a set schedule. “Special education is an integral part of the total
educational enterprise, not a separate order. In any school system, special
education is a means of enlarging the capacity of the system to serve the
educational needs of all children… A primary goal of educators should be to help
build accommodative learning opportunities for children with exceptionalities in
regular educational programs. In the implementation of this goal, special
education can serve as a support system, and special educators can assist regular
school personnel in managing the education of children with exceptionalities”
(Special Education in the Schools, n.d.). Teachers must understand that these
children require more attention. My cooperating teacher makes sure that each
child is given their fair chances in everything happening in the classroom. She
tries to have them participate in morning meeting.
V. Data
Children gather on the carpet for morning meeting
Breakfast lasts for about 20 minutes to half an hour
Children use the Smartboard during morning meeting. The teacher has them
point out their name and spell it out loud if they can. Non-vocal children
simply point at their name.
Children also point out the weather, what month it is, and if they’re at school
or home. They would sing a song about the weather and the months.
Sometimes they would dance to the songs.
There is a calendar on the wall on the morning meeting carpet along with a
weather board. The children are asked what month it is, what day, and how
the weather is outside. Much like their names, if they can spell out the months,
then they will be asked to spell the month out loud.
TEACHER-TAUGHT LESSON 3
Children who can’t sit still by themselves sit in or near the lap of the teachers.
VI. Analysis
These children are a handful. Although there are less than ten students,
some days feel like
there are twenty.
However, this doesn’t
make any of the
teachers or me think of
the students any less.
From what I’ve been
able to see, no two days
are ever the same. My
cooperating teacher
follows the day by a
schedule. It’s hard to
make a set lesson plan
for each individual
student on account of
the difference of each
disability. To the right
is their schedule.
The kids are
pretty adjusted to this
schedule. Here, we see
that each activity of the
day has a specific
amount of time.
Children with
disabilities tend to like
following a schedule,
as it’s what they are
accustomed to.
“…people with Autism
and related disorders
like ADHD, PDD-Nos and Asperger often have difficulty coping with
unstructured activities and benefit from increased structure in their lives”
(AutiPlan, n.d.). During morning meeting, the behavior of the children varies.
Some get too impatient from sitting too long which in turn leads to one of them
crying. When one cries, another will try to copy even if he has nothing to cry
about. During morning meeting, it’s a good time to observe the appearance of
each child. We try to see if they have any scratches, bruises or rashes that couldn’t
be closely observed during breakfast. Sometimes the parents would let my
cooperating teacher know through email, but from observations, she and the
assistants have been discovering injuries themselves.
VII. Recommendations
TEACHER-TAUGHT LESSON 4
Learning.aspx
schedules-autism
TEACHER-TAUGHT LESSON 5
https://www.cec.sped.org/policy-and-advocacy/cec-professional-policies/special-
education-in-the-schools
X. Appendix