Special Education Substitute
I was a long-term substitute for 6 weeks as a special education teacher in a suburban elementary school in Naperville, Illinois. I had 10 students in kindergarten, second, and third grade on my caseload, and it was my responsibility to help them make academic progress and reach their IEP goals. I pushed into classrooms the majority of the time to provide additional support to these students in the general education setting. Also, I progressed monitored certain students to track progress in relation to their reading and math goals. While working with students, I made learning as visual as possible and used a lot of reinforcement and encouragement to best meet their learning needs. I regularly communicated with the classroom teachers as well as the support staff team to discuss student progress and additional modifications and adaptations we could provide. We met weekly to discuss all students, and we regularly had meetings to discuss individual student progress, their goals, and behavioral support plans. Throughout my 6 weeks of teaching, I developed relationships with my students as I helped them continue to progress in the classroom and meeting their individual goals and was an important member of the support staff team. Below is a summary of the interventions and strategies I used working with students and other responsibilities I had as a teacher.
Interventions Used:
- Created social stories about expectations (ex: morning work, field trip, gym class)
- Lexia
- Read Naturally
- Great Leaps
- Edmark
- Boardmaker
- AIMSWEB for progress monitoring (Reading CBM, MCAP, MCOMP)
- Flashcards
- Worked with students in both small group and one-on-one settings
Strategies when working with students:
- Give choices (ex: A or B, do you want to finish now or later?)
- Use First X, Then Y when stating expectations; used as an incentive
- Used timers to stay on task, give students breaks if needed
- Used manipulatives often to make learning visual (ex: number grid, blocks, coins, letter games and matching, dry-erase board, highlighters)
- Daily schedule as a checklist
- Give stickers as a reward
- Lots of repetition of activities
- Provide fidgets as needed
- Provide lots of encouragement and positive reinforcement
General Responsibilities:
- Push in to different classrooms throughout the school day
- Participated in Behavior Support Plan meetings for specific students to review and update the plans
- Attended grade-level data review meetings to discuss students’ classroom performance
- Participated in weekly support staff team meetings
- Communicated regularly with classroom teachers to discuss progress and schedules
- Participated in meetings to discuss student progress and additional strategies to try; classroom teacher and support staff who worked with individual student attended each meeting
- Participated in school-wide reading benchmarking for winter timeframe
- Completed Quarter 2 IEP goal updates
