The field experience requirement for this course is 10 hours.
What is field experience? Field experience is your opportunity to observe and assist with prescribed activities in an educational setting. For this course, you can perform your fieldwork in any elementary classroom environment. Contact your faculty member for permission to observe a different grade level. Reach out to your faculty member if you have questions.
Who handles my field experience placement? The school placements for CBE sections are self-selected, and you will need to provide Proof of Placement via an email or other documentation from school personnel. If you are local, you may choose to apply to volunteer using the district's website.
How do I record my experience? Field experience is two parts. First, your field experience is logged via a signed log of hours and then submitted through Blackboard at the end of each course. Second, is through a reflection blog that you will develop and answer open ended question that promote a higher level of thinking.
Where do I write my blog? Create your blog using a blogging software you choose. Below are suggestions for free online blogging tools. Your blog must be viewable by your instructor in order to receive credit for the assignments.
Check Blackboard for additional details on the field experience requirement for this course.
Review and Connect:
In Project 1, you were asked to explore your current classroom environment, including schedule, materials, and standards related to early reading development. In Project 2, you were asked to dive deeper into the literacy block schedule, observing the actual student and teacher roles as well as teachers’ strategies for meeting the diverse learning needs and preferences of their students.
Observe and Reflect:
Now that you have reported on the details of what you saw, your first field experience activity requires you to reflect on those observations, and evaluate what you saw. For example, don’t simply re-state what happened; provide an evaluation of what you saw by making connections to what you are learning about what works in the K-6 classroom.
Blog Submission
Your blog submission should consist of approximately 4-6 well-developed paragraphs which explicitly connect literacy observations and course learning.
Review and Connect:
With the arrival of mClass, teachers now have a digital tool that is dedicated to helping them determine their students’ reading behaviors and appropriate grouping strategies for instruction. Unfortunately, this also means that many teachers are not skilled at completing their own Running Records and Miscue Analyses by hand.
Observe, Administer, and Reflect
For this field work activity, you should observe a teacher using mClass (or other similar electronic method) for collecting data on the reading behaviors of 3 different students. After that, you should conduct “old-school” running records on at least 3 different students of varying reading ability. The LibGuide for EDU 3410 has a special section devoted to Running Records – how to administer, score, and analyze – which you should explore and/or review as needed.
You will need to continue administering running records to each child at higher levels until he/she is unable to earn an accuracy score of 90% (the instructional level). This may take a while, so plan ahead, and take a break if the student seems to grow tired.
After conducting and analyzing your own running records, and determining their INSTRUCTIONAL LEVELS, talk about what you learned about your each of the students, and what next steps are appropriate for them.
Finally, briefly compare the two assessment experiences. What are the pros and cons of each assessment? What can you do with both assessments? What is possible with one, but not the other? Does this matter? What do you think you will do when you are the Instructor of Record?
Blog Submission:
Attach your 3 Running Records + Score Sheets + Analysis/Next Steps
Write your comparison of the two assessment procedures.
Review and Connect:
Teachers conduct running records in order to determine students’ instructional levels – i.e., the level at which a text is neither too easy nor too hard, and scaffolded reading instruction can occur. We look at reading levels this way:
Independent: 95-100% accuracy (just right for reading alone)
Instructional: 90-94% accuracy (just right for building strategies)
Frustration: 89% and below (too hard, not good for reading alone or building strategies)
Once we determine students’ instructional levels, we are able to place them in small homogenous groups for targeted reading instruction.
Observe, Assist, and Reflect:
For this field experience, you are to observe – and eventually assist – your teacher during guided reading groups. Pay attention to the following:
§ How texts and activities are chosen for the group
§ How the teacher scaffolds reading instruction in the group
§ How the teacher differentiates within the small group
§ How the students participate in the group
§ How the teacher paces the lesson (How long? What components? Why?)
§ How the teacher manages the small group while others are working independently
§ How the teacher transitions between groups
§ Which groups meet how often and why
Blog Submission:
Your blog submission should be approximately 4-6 well-developed paragraphs which explicitly connect guided reading observations to course learning. Be sure to think about and incorporate what you have been learning about research-based practices.
You must also submit your signed log indicating 10 hours of field experience for this class.