Focused Observation of Struggling student

During my focused observation I chose to observe a young boy who has an IEP. I am not positive as to what is on his IEP, but after my observation I believe he may have ADD. This third grader is mainstreamed with the regular class most of the day. He goes to the Special Needs teacher for about 45 minutes at the most daily. During my observation, I noticed many interesting things. The child does not have severe trouble in the classroom. If the teacher or I remind the boy to keep working he does well. If we forget to after about 15 minutes, he falls off track. I observed him during a reading lesson, where the teacher was reading to the class in front of the room and asking questions. While the teacher was reading, the boy had his book placed on his lap and flipped through the pages often. The child never looked at the teacher and seemed very “tuned out” the whole time. During the class discussion, the young boy always looked down. Very rarely did I see his head rise. He never attempted to answer a question, and I’m not positive he even paid attention to the questions that were asked. After the lesson, the teacher passed out a reading worksheet while stating the directions. After the worksheet was passed out, the child walked up to the teacher and asked her to repeat the directions.

The observation somewhat intrigued me. I knew this young boy was struggling, but when I was solely focused on him, I saw many new things. The student’s behavior always connects with what is going on in the classroom. During quiet times, such as reading, he is unfocused. When things become louder or more "hands on," he is interested. For example, at one point during my observation, the teacher asked a question and many students had an opinion. The noise level went up a lot, and this quickly caught the young boy’s attention. He sits in the front row therefore the teacher can often use proximity to grab his attention. I often work one on one with the young child. He is very smart and receives good grades. The child just needs a reminder every few minutes to stay on track. I definitely learned a lot from this observation, and I feel that I can now better assist this young boy.