Professional Placement

Throughout my two weeks of professional placement, I made numerous observations of two students with different abilities. Both students are from a Year 2 class. These students were treated fairly, but at the same time, my mentor teacher did her best to accommodate for these students in particular. The other students in the class were understanding and respectful of their disabilities and would often assist them if they were struggling with a task. (Please note: during my Profession Experience, I was unable to create my own lesson plans as the school had all year 2 teachers planning the lessons as a team. I did have an input and assisted with this process but did not create my own lesson plans. However, I did create a ILP for Student B, Jai).

Student A - Jonathan:

• 7 years old

• Grade 2, Higher

• Reading Level: “M” (Grade 3)

• Disability: Two hearing aids

• Notes: Jonathan works significantly well; he rarely gets distracted when working independently. When completing group work of listening for instructions, he can get distracted. The teacher (my mentor or myself) wears a small microphone around the neck, which transmits straight to his hearing aid so he can hear the instructions clearly. On occasion, the transmitter doesn’t work, resulting in a buzzing or beeping sound in Jonathans ear, this leads him to “zoning out” and he can miss crucial instructions. See spelling test example, Jonathans hearing aid must not of been working properly during this task, as you can see the words he got wrong are from mishearing, so therefore he was unable to dictate what was said.

Student B - Jai:

• 7 years old

• Grade 2, Lower (mid-end of Foundation level)

• Reading Level: “D” (Foundation)

• Disability: Dyslexia and a severe learning disability

• Notes: Jai struggles to focus independently. He needs continuous prompting and guiding. On occasion, my mentor teacher or myself would scribe for him as the task was simply taking too long (this way his ideas can at least get written down). Jai attends tutoring outside of school 3 times a week as well as in school one-on-one with a literacy aid twice a week. When reading and writing, Jai will often substitute words with random words (see spelling example, was asked to spell “big” but wrote “up”) and cannot recognise that the word doesn’t actually belong. Please also see ILP developed by my mentor teacher and myself for Jai.