Step 1: Provide a summary of what you experienced so the reader knows what you did

and what you experienced

Description of the critical incident or practice
At 9:30, my group was instructed to observe Mrs. Grace’s 6th grade math class
in room 622. When we walked into the room, the students were seated at their desks.
The room was designed with 3 columns of desks and in each column there were two
seats next to each other. The students were working on solving inverse equations. The
people in my group and I looked at each other with wide eyes because we realized that
this is something we had not had to do in a very long time. Mrs. Grace introduced us to
the class and proceeded with her lesson. While the students were working on the next
3 math problems independently, we were allowed to walk around the room and ask
how students were doing or if they needed help.
As I was circling the room, I noticed that one of the students who was seated
towards the back of the room was not looking down at her work and was looking
around for someone to help her. I walked over to her and asked how she was doing and
she told me “meh” while resting her head on her fist. She was stuck on the first
inverse equation so I walked her through the steps of solving it. I tried to explain it as
similarly as Mrs. Grace went through the solving steps. I explained each step, but I
prompted her to give me the numbers and to decide what operations to do. Eventually,
we got through it and I got up to walk around the room once again.
As I was making my final round around the room, I noticed that the same
student was looking around for help once again. This time, she needed help with the
next equation. I looked at her paper to see if she had even attempted to solve the
problem, and it looked like she had tried! I went to grab my notebook so we could do
the equation together. I asked her to talk me through the steps of solving the equation,
but this one seemed to be more difficult because of the fractions that were involved. I
re-taught this student how to create improper fractions from mixed numbers by
prompting and guiding her responses. After we solved the problem, I gave her a high
five and congratulated her on her hard work!
a. Feelings
i. Glad
 ii. Nervous
b. Thoughts
i. I felt glad because I was able to help a student feel more confident about
solving the equations and getting to the right answer.
ii. I was nervous because I didn’t know if I was going to be able to
remember how to solve these problems and because of that, I didn’t
know if I was going to be able to help the student with anything.
c. Connection to your thinking:
i. What went well?
● Walking through the math problems step by step
ii. What didn’t go so well?
● I didn’t really know exactly what I was supposed to be doing while
in this class so I felt awkward just walking around
iii. What do I want to do the same next time?
● Praise students for showing their work and show how they were
thinking through each equation
iv. What do I want to do differently next time?
● Go in with more confidence. I think that if my nerves rubbed off
on some students, it might distract them from completing their
work

Step 2: Make at least one connection to personal experience, other texts you’ve read,
and/or what you know about schools
- I remember being in middle school and I also remember it not being my
favorite experience. I was in a great district and I had a lot of friends, but I was
emotionally maturing and experiencing a lot of new feelings about myself that I
hadn’t previously experienced. While being inside of Clay middle school, I was
experiencing some of those same feelings I had felt just a few years ago. It’s
good to know that middle school really hasn’t changed since I was there, but it
still isn’t amazing to know that either. I am excited though because I get to be
 in middle school and experience it from a new perspective than the last time
that I was there!

Step 3: Expand on five High Leverage Practices or more you chose to use in your
write up by telling which one, how you used it and what your thinking was in
choosing this for your student(s).
- HLP #15
- High Leverage Practices #15 focuses on scaffolded supports in the
classroom. From my experience on 2/2/24, Mrs. Grace incorporated
these scaffolded supports into her math lessons so that students will
gain the confidence to solve them on their own. Mrs. Grace would go
through a few example problems as a class and then have her students
work on a few on their own. Once students started to wrap up, she would
go over it as a class. The scaffolds start from her teaching the students
how to set up and solve the problems and then the students will be able
to solve them on their own.
- HLP #16
- High Leverage Practices #16 focuses on explicit instruction in the
classroom. In Mrs. Fulp’s 8th grade science classroom, explicit
instruction was incorporated into their introductory routines when class
was first getting started for the day. She has her students sign into their
canvas accounts and take the mini quiz that reviews what they learned
from the previous class. In doing this, she can prioritize helping students
individually and make sure that this gets done in a timely manner. This
time also gives Mrs. Fulp the opportunity to set up the lab that the
students will be doing during that class period.
- HLP #19
- High Leverage Practices #16 focuses on using assistive and instructional
technologies. In Mrs. Fulp’s classroom, there were 3 students who were
from the special education department that joined her science classroom
with the other 8th grade students. One of the students has very low
 mobility and uses a mechanical wheelchair to help him move around the
school and the classroom. This particular wheel chair is able to change
the position of the seat. The student using this technology chose to stand
with it today, and not sit and so the chair part is able to push his body
forward into a standing position. There is a knob that controls the
direction of the wheelchair and this is located on the left arm rest.
- HLP #20
- High Leverage Practices #20 focuses on providing intensive instruction.
For our third rotation, we were supposed to go to Mrs. Mehl’s MLL
classroom. However, when we arrived at the room, we were asked to not
come in because of WIDA testing that was taking place at that time. The
students needed minimal distractions and time to focus on their tests.
WIDA is an English Language Proficiency test. The purpose of these tests
is to make sure that the teachers and the district are providing enough
support for their ELL students to achieve English language proficiency.
- HLP #18
- High Leverage Practices #18 focuses on using strategies to promote
active student engagement. While in the 8th grade resource room, we
were able to watch one of the Butler student teachers work with a
student who was learning english. One of the strategies she used was
tapping out the sounds of the words using felt squares as guides. For
each sound, the student would use a finger to tap a felt square. If the
word had 4 sounds, the student would use 4 fingers to tap 4 felt squares
as he sounded the word out. This trick kept the student engaged in
learning the sounds and making sure he was focusing on the practices.

Step 4: Field experience. Choosing 3 questions to answer about your experience.

1. Describe the room arrangement of the classroom
a. In the resource center, the room had maybe around 12 desks with chairs
in a horseshoe shape facing inwards and towards the front of the room.
In the back left corner, there were comfortable chairs for students to sit
 in. To the right of the door, there was a moon shaped table for the
teacher to work independently with a student or for a whole group of
students to work with the teacher on a certain assignment. In the back of
the room, there was a rectangle table that had some chairs with backs
and some stools (all of which were comfortable to sit on and had
cushioning). At this table, another teacher could work with a single
student or multiple students at the same time and have a lot of space to
spread out materials. In the back right corner of the classroom, there was
a lot of cabinets and storage, along with a large desk for the resource
teacher to use for snacks or learning materials.
2. Do you see any assistive tech with any of the students?
a. In Mrs. Fulp’s 8th grade science class, there was a student who was hard
of hearing. In order for her to hear the people around her better, she had
a box that was hooked up to a device in her ear, and if she needed to use
it, she could control the input volume. This is very helpful for students
who have hearing impairments because it allows them to hear their
teachers and friends without having to rely on someone else to explain
what happened in class.
3. If you did a lesson with students, what instructional strategies do you plan to
use to engage students cognitively?
a. In the resource center, a student was asked to sort words into two
different categories. One category was words ending in “es” and the
other category was words ending in “s”. This strategy requires the
student to be actively engaged in the activity and focus on the cognitive
processes that allow him to differentiate the endings of the words. I will
use this sorting strategy in a future classroom because it is engaging and
honestly a fun and competitive way to learn/work on a skill.