Stacy Sophie 

  1. Background: Stacy is a Spanish descendent, sweet and sometimes energetic six years old girl, who passed to second grade. Stacy is the older child of three. Shelsy, a four-year-old, and Noah, who is the house newborn, are her siblings. Stacy has been raised by a single mother. However, her mother moves in with her third boyfriend, who is Stacy’s second stepfather. From time to time, her grandmother picks her up after school since his mother is taking care of her younger siblings. Stacy loved to see ‘mama.’ Stacy’s family reported how challenging it is to manage Stacy’s behavior at home. She always fights Shelsy.
  2. Physical Presence and Gesture: Stacy’s physical presence is characterized by vivid facial gestures, but not many verbal expressions. She doesn’t have a hard time staying still, often she fallow sleep when sitting at her desk. She is always quiet and shame. In class, she participates exclusively when the teacher asks her to do so. Stacy tends to turn her glace down when she speaks. However, she focuses pretty well on an assigned task. She is never impatient or anxious about anything.
  3. Relationships with Children and Adults: Stacy’s relationship with children and adults in the classroom can be described as cordial. She enjoys talking with classmates and playing games during recess. Stacy is well-liked in the class by his peers, mostly due to his caring disposition and sweetness. When she gets along with his peers, she consistently speaks with them in class. The teacher always reminds her to turn and talk with his partner only when instructed. Stacy likes to ask questions and engage in conversations with adults. She particularly likes having one-on-one interactions with the adults in his class.
  4. Activities and Interests: Stacy likes participating in group activities. She loves the idea of collaborating with his peers while taking the lead role. She is not interested in any activity that she must complete independently. She has a fascination for dolls, particularly LOL; it often serves as an extrinsic motivation for her to complete an assigned task. She loves puzzles. When given a choice to choose an activity to keep her engaged, puzzles are always her best option.
  5. Formal Learning: Stacy is always enthusiastic during math lessons; this is the same for other subject areas, such as ELA/ writing and art. Her intuitive nature comes to play during math instructional activities; she is always eager to provide solutions to math problems and often frustrated if she did not get the correct answer to a question. Transitioning is a bite of an issue, especially when the transition is from a preferred activity to an un-preferred one. Stacy is a visual learner; she gravitates more toward tangible activities. According to her, she loves coming to school.
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Jesse
July 25, 2022 8:49 pm

Dear Marlen,

I am interested in your post, “Puzzle,” because it provides in a very concise manner the most important and basic information about a student; I appreciated how clearly you used the four categories from Carini to structure your Review. I wanted to comment on each category that you included, and I picked a few sentences that you wrote I felt were pertinent to their respective classifications.

  • Background
  • All of the information you included seems really important here. Age of the student, how many siblings, family structure, cultural/linguistic background, known behavioral issues.
  • Physical Presence and Gesture
  • “Stacy’s physical presence is characterized by vivid facial gestures, but not many verbal expressions.” It took me a minute to process what that meant, but after some thinking on it, I realized that this means that Stacy is not as much of a verbal communicator as she is someone who communicates with body language. I would be interested to know more about Stacy’s physical presence and how it interacts with her personality, but I think this sentence pretty much sums it up pretty powerfully.
  • Relationship with Children and Adults
  • ” Stacy is well-liked in the class by his peers, mostly due to his caring disposition and sweetness.” This sentence stood out for me because it seems to capture what is at the heart of Stacy’s interactions with students and adults — his kindness and caring nature. It made me reflect on what characteristics would be present in a student that was well-liked by their peers and teachers. Certainly social warmness and kindheartedness could reasonably be expected to be a prominent feature of this type of student.
  • Activities and Interests
  • “She loves puzzles. When given a choice to choose an activity to keep her engaged, puzzles are always her best option.” This sentence was fascinating to me because it contrasted so strongly with the previous sentence — “She has a fascination for dolls, particularly LOL; it often serves as an extrinsic motivation for her to complete an assigned task.” On the one hand, Stacy is driven by the desire to decode certain problems. On the other hand, she still needs external motivation to stay on task.
  • Formal Learning
  • “Transitioning is a bite of an issue, especially when the transition is from a preferred activity to an un-preferred one.” I thought this sentence was interesting because of how much sense it makes within the context of all of the previous information. Certainly switching from task to task would be difficult for a student who struggled to balance extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation.

Have you read any other material by Patricia Carini? I was interested so I did a quick Google search and I found an obituary written on her that was published on Sarah Lawrence College’s website. (https://www.sarahlawrence.edu/art-of-teaching/tribute-to-pat-carini.html). I thought you might be interested in this because it gives an idea of what kind of person and educator Carini was and that might give a good idea of what her work was really all about. The article includes some quotations from her that I found compelling.

Thanks for your writing. I look forward to seeing what you write next because I’m curious to see how Stacy develops in your experience working with him. Hopefully she will grow out of the need to play with LOL dolls as a way to motivate him to learn, or maybe her relationship with the dolls will change over time.

Sincerely,

Jesse

Emily
July 24, 2022 6:48 pm

Dear Marlen:

I enjoyed reading your descriptive review “Puzzle” because you clearly captured the home life and preferences of this student. It is clear from your writing that you have observed Stacy and carefully considered her behaviors and how her family life influences her school experience.

One part of your writing that stands out for me is: “She has a fascination for dolls, particularly LOL; it often serves as an extrinsic motivation for her to complete an assigned task.” I think this is important because you have managed to link her interests and her behavior in a way that a casual observer might not. This would be valuable information for a future teacher or caregiver in better understanding Stacy as a person.

Another sentence that I appreciated was: “Stacy’s relationship with children and adults in the classroom can be described as cordial.” This stood out for me because of your excellent word choice with “cordial.” Someone who is cordial is politely warm and friendly, and it gave me an instant sense that Stacy is a young person with impressive social awareness.

Have you seen this video? I thought you might be interested in this because you mentioned that Stacy has difficulty with transitions, and this video gives ten tips to help children move from one activity to the next. Stacy is probably not the only student who you will meet that has this challenge – it’s completely normal! It’s always nice to have a few extra tools in your toolbox.

Thanks for your writing. I look forward to seeing what you write next because of how much you clearly care for your students and their success. I’m sure it will make you a great teacher!

Emily

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