INDIVIDUAL STUDENT OBSERVATION

Preservice teacher: Student first name, year level, context:

Tia Langston Isla – year 5 – Dyslexia – confident

1.1: Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students 1.3 Students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds
Graduate level: Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of physical, social Graduate level: Demonstrate knowledge of teaching strategies that are responsive to
and intellectual development and characteristics of students and how these may the learning strengths and needs of students from diverse linguistic, cultural, religious
affect learning and socioeconomic backgrounds
4.1 Support student participation 5.2 Provide feedback to students on their learning
Graduate level: Identify strategies to support inclusive student participation and Graduate level: Demonstrate an understanding of the purpose of providing timely and
engagement in classroom activities. appropriate feedback to students about their learning.
Beginning placement observation:
Isla is a very positive learner who is always happy to share her work, she very rarely seems to complain as
she takes her learning seriously. She has dyslexia that greatly affects her literacy skills, hence why she is
roughly at a grade 3 level, but verbally she is much more competent.

Interpretation of observation (student needs):

Isla needs to focus her abilities towards a more vocal/verbal manner. She would be able to show her
abilities and knowledge much better if she used her computer for writing tasks more often, as she spends a
long time getting her words on paper when she has sentences flooding through her mind. She seems to do
better in the handwriting lesson, as it is a copying task from the white board, but it still does take her a little
while to complete.

Pre-service teacher action:

A great action to take, would be, to incorporate more verbal learning experiences into her lessons to give
her a chance to share what knowledge is on her brain. I shall also be ensuring to ask more questions to
assess her knowledge on the topic and the sentences she has wrote, as her handwriting and spelling is quite
low and when it is read it doesn’t always make much sense, but when she reads it she knows exactly what
is meant to be interpreted.

Mid-placement observation:
Due to helping Isla with her writing, scribing while she spoke, I was able to get written work of a good
quality. Although it is quite important for her to develop her writing abilities, due to her severe dyslexia, in
some lessons where I wanted quality and creative pieces of work, such as poetry, I scribed for her so she
could get all her ideas on the page before she forgot them.

Interpretation of observation (student needs):

Allowing this student to verbally share some of her sentences, poetry or writing will be very beneficial for
developing her confidence and ability to describe what she was learning.

Pre-service teacher action:

I will spend the following weeks using more verbal and oral formative assessment pieces so that the
number of students that struggle with writing in my class, including Isla, can show their knowledge and also
explain what they wanted to have on their page to me so I can mark accordingly.

End placement observation:

After multiple weeks of incorporating sharing time at the end of each lesson, and adding in oral speeches to
lesson time, I have been able to truly see the educational development that this student has had over the
short 5 weeks I have taught her. She was able to show me exactly what was going through her mind, and
what knowledge she had developed aloud, while also being able to read out her written work to me while I
was marking it.
Although this student was extremely behind in terms of learning levels in mathematics, after placing her in
a smaller learning group with mathematic activities that are relevant to her learning needs, she was able to
show some improvements. Although they were not large improvements, there was some improvement
that did develop over the 5 weeks.

Supervising Teacher: Lynette Kaeding Pre-service teacher: Tia Langston 20/06/19