Lance Sprunger

Dr. McCracken

EDU-245-82A

24 April 2019

Story Boost Reflection

The Story Boost article our class read helped me gain a new understanding of the

importance of reading one-on-one to my students. Reading one-on-one helps students to more

quickly develop word knowledge and phonemic awareness; not only that, but students are able to

connect to stories and respond to them with the help of a teacher, staff member, volunteer, or

college student. I was happy to participate in Story Boost, I attended every Wednesday morning

at 8:00 AM. I have gained many new insights from my experience at Francis Solcum Elementary

School and I am beyond thankful for the opportunity I had to work one-on-one with my students.

The first student I had was Ma’jor. Right from the beginning Maj’or was a very friendly

student and was excited to read with me each week. Ma’jor loves sports and has the dream of

becoming an NBA player someday. He also loves video games, one of his favorites is Fortnite.

Before our reading session we would always talk about our lives and how we were doing and

any new or exciting thing happening. Then we would dive into the reading the books. Ma’jor is a

very intelligent student and would pick up on a lot of the word and concepts I was reading. I

remember the first word he picked up on was the word “money.” He talked about how much he

loved money. I found the correlation of his love for money and his ability to recognize the word

so quickly very intriguing.

My second reader was Benson. After I was done reading with Ma’jor I would visit the

special needs classroom to read with Benson. Benson has Autism. I have never worked with a
student who has Autism, so everything was very new to me. I happen to be in Psychology of the

Exceptional Learner this semester which has been very beneficial while working with and

understanding Benson. Students with Autism often have extra sensory needs which is something

I definitely noticed while working with Benson. The very first time I met with Benson, when I

went to pick up the book to read he immediately snatched it out of my hand and started flipping

through the pages. I let him look through the pages and was astounded by all the information he

was able to pick up by briefly looking through it. He would look at the illustrations and knew

some of the words and by the end he would ask me why a certain event or character did

something. After this, I told him we would read the book together and find out what happens.

Once we read though the book he we were able to find the answers to his questions. Ever since

this first experience I learned that I need to be patient with him and allow him to touch the book

and see the thing he wants before we would dive into the reading together.

Working with Benson taught me so many needed skills as a future educator. I better

understand Autism, both from my experience with Benson and then also learning about it in my

Psychology of the Exceptional Learner class at the same time. Benson taught me patience and

how to listen and understand. Benson is extremely intelligent, he was able to pick up on almost

all of the concepts, but he just needed explanations to why things happened. Students with

Autism struggle with extra sensory needs, social cues, and the need for structure. The most

important thing I learned from Benson is that we must look past the struggles they face in order

to see and value our students as wonderful human beings, just as they are.”