Special Education 1

Field Experience Report #3: Special Education

Alyssa Eichele

Tarrant County College

EDUC-2301-21003

Spring Semester

Professor Sikes

14 April 2024
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For my third round of observations, I viewed April 2nd and 4th in the morning at the Hurst-

Euless-Bedford Independent School District at Trinity Lakes Elementary School, located in Fort

Worth, Texas. Trinity Lakes was built in 2020. The facility is large with a gigantic foyer to greet

the students. The building is two stories, and they separate the students by grade with 4th-6th

grade on the top level and pre-kindergarten through 3rd grade on the lower level. The school is

beautiful with very little wear and tear and gives a modern and up-to-date look. They have

bulletin boards along the hallways showing off the students’ art and achievements. The

classrooms have the most recent technology, and the rooms are much larger than other

classrooms I have been in. In addition, the classrooms are equipped with nice educational toys,

books, desks, and chairs. For my special population observation, I was able to examine Mrs.

Moore’s kindergarten through first-grade classroom. Over the two days I witnessed, the content

covered word work including notebook time, library time, and stations.

Program Format

The special education program that I observed was a self-contained special education

classroom that has eight students. Some of the students have “out class”, where they are pulled to

go into the regular classroom. They add time as they progress. For example, one of the students

is progressing from being mute and as he improved, he added more regular class time. There are

a few different personnel that were used in the educational setting. One was the speech-language

pathologist, who pulled a few students for individual and personalized learning. While working

on the notebooks the Speech therapist, worked within the classroom with the few students that

did not get pulled for individual lessons. Mrs. Moore also has two full-time paraprofessionals.

Their names are Mrs. Aulora and Mrs. Megan and have been working with her for a while now

and I could tell that they were all very close. The paraprofessionals help support the classroom in
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whatever Mrs. Moore needs. Some of the tasks would include, opening the students’ food,

cutting, and preparing the next activity, and taking the students to their speech lessons.

Lesson or Activities

At the start of every morning, she has a learning video that she plays almost every day.

The videos are Jack Hartmann's video on letters, sounds, and signing the letters of the alphabet.

The students enjoyed hearing and seeing the same videos. When this was over Mrs. Moore

would have a group lesson on the rug where she would ask how they were feeling today

followed by affirmations, and class rules. The main lesson I witnessed was the students learning

about the digraph of the week “CH” for the first time learning this information. Mrs. Moore went

on to play a video covering the “CH” sound and word examples. After the video, Mrs. Moore

asked the students to name different “CH” words and she wrote them on the board. Then the

students recited the words together. Afterward, the students receive a tracing worksheet where

they cover “CH” words. When the student completed their worksheet, they received their next

lesson which contained a second worksheet which was a word bank, and then the students

needed to write the correct word next to the object. This is building on the same concept of “CH”

words they just traced and recited as a class.

After their snack break, they went on to work on their interactive notebook with sight

words. The students are all being taught the same content when in a group setting like with

digraphs. During the interactive notebook portion of the lesson, students had more individualized

lessons. A few of the students were filling out the notebook by themselves. Others were working

with the paraprofessional and speech therapist. Others got to see an example and tried to

replicate it. During notebook time the teacher taught in small groups, the teacher sat at the
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collaborative teacher table, and worked with students two at a time on the notebook. She used

lots of redirecting to get the students back on track and an enormous amount of praise.

Instructional Strategies

Mrs. Moore does pre-teach vocabulary before beginning her lesson. She will cover what the

topic will be and then explain what it is to help with student understanding. She also tries to

access prior knowledge to help with the next concept they are learning. She does this by asking

questions before beginning the next lesson to see where they are at. Mrs. Moore uses a mix of

visual aids, manipulatives, and graphic organizers. Some students are allowed to use

manipulatives while working on their graphic organizers. For example, when one of the girls was

working with the speech language pathologist she was allowed to play with Legos while

working on her speech lesson.

The specialized strategy that Mrs. Moore uses the most is "I do, we do, and you do". She will

teach the lesson or vocabulary first and then will do the lesson activity as a whole class. Next, the

students will then do it on their own. Over time, she stated, that as soon as you get to know your

students, you will be able to tell when they understand it. She also stated that in special education

you will have to understand that some students may never fully grasp certain topics. A

specialized strategy the teacher employs to check for understanding is by looking over their

work. Due to having very attentive paraprofessionals, she has a lot of time to give each student

individual attention and verify they understand. This is done with verbal and written

understanding.

Mrs. Moore allocates a lot of time for lessons and for anything the students may need to do

throughout the day. They read the material to the students and will cover the words they have

gone over. The students that need more assistance the paraprofessionals will disperse to different
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desk pods and sat with the students and help throughout. At one table, a paraprofessional is

sitting with the student who is mute and with a student that will inflict self-harm by biting herself

when frustrated. She was able to redirect and assist them quickly by being at their table most of

the time. There is one student that uses assistive technology, and they are the student who is

mute. He uses a school issued iPad that uses a program called LAMP, which is short for

Language Acquisition through Motor Planning. This is an aid that helps individuals develop

sentences by pressing buttons on a speech-generating device.

Supplemental Information

In special education, they are faced with many different challenges. They have a lack of

resources, training, and support in their school. For example, about 95% of the classroom was

purchased from outside of what the school has provisioned. Mrs. Moore does not feel like she

has access to all the necessary resources to function day to day. Also, most training throughout

the school year is all general education based. In special education, they also do not have access

to most of the programs that the general education teachers do. Lastly, they are usually the only

ones in the building who are certified and thoroughly know what it takes to be in a special

education class which causes a lack of support from their administration.

The ARD is attended by Mrs. Moore or the special education teacher, a general education

teacher, and administrator, the diagnostician, any person who might be giving future services that

the student might need, and the parents or guardians. Before the students are placed in Mrs.

Moore’s classroom have already been evaluated. The person who typically gives the

recommendation is the general education teacher. Then they will receive an evaluation and if

approved they are placed in a program.