Ms. Smestad
K-2 SPED Teacher
Room Number: 215
Phone Number: 508-696-6523
Email Address: ssmestad at mvyps.org

Teaching Philosophy

My teaching philosophy has been shaped vastly by my experience as an early childhood educator. With eight years of experience as an integrated preschool teacher I have found that students learn best when they are in a nurturing and safe environment. I foster children's sense of exploration by providing hands on materials to learn and grow with. I encourage children to ask questions and be creative in hopes of increasing their independence in their education. My hope is that all of my students become enthusiastic life long learners.

Classroom Expectation

Young children need and like predictability! There is a sense of stability in knowing that everyday I will get them in their classroom at the same time. Building classroom community with my students is another beginning of the year expectation. We discuss, evaluate, and agree on a set of classroom expectations. Together we define what they are and why they are important for our learning environment. Lastly, I believe strongly in PRAISE! Highlighting and celebrating the positive in everyone is imperative. Young children LOVE attention and specific praising of positive behaviors or actions helps reinforce them and hopefully ensure they will repeat this particular behavior.

Curriculum

At the Tisbury School we are fortunate to be able to offer extra support in the academic areas of reading, writing and mathematics in addition to students’ regularly scheduled academic times in the classroom. Students who are on an Individualized Education Program (IEP) are working towards their individual goals and objectives specified on their IEPs. Additional students are selected to participate in small group instruction based on teacher recommendations as well as assessment scores from unit/theme tests, GRADE, G-MADE, Symphony Math, Scholastic Reading Inventory, MCAS and DIBELS Next.

SPED teachers and specialists are able to pull small groups of students to ensure that each child is getting the individual support needed to make and maintain progress. Sometimes the groups meet in the regular classrooms, and other times the groups will meet in another available classroom or space.

A resource block is set up within each classroom schedule to allow for students to be pulled for small group instruction without missing any of their Unified Arts classes