Peter M.

Gombert Elementary School 2707 Ridge Road Aurora, IL 60504

Phone 630.375.3700 Fax: 630.375.3701 http://gombert.ipsd.org

Jeremy Ricken, Ph.D. Principal

March 12, 2013 To Whom It May Concern: Re: Morgan Rowe

Inspire all students to achieve their greatest potential

I am writing this letter on behalf of Morgan Rowe. During the winter of 2013, I had the pleasure of hosting Morgan as a student teacher in my third grade classroom. During this time, I developed great respect and admiration for her as an educator. I was impressed with her level of comfort and confidence in the classroom and her ability to take initiative. I am pleased to highly recommend Morgan Rowe for a teaching position in your district. Morgan began her experience as an observer and used every available opportunity to build a positive rapport with each student and the staff. She realized the importance of planning for instruction. The third grade teachers plan as a team. Morgan is a wonderful collaborator and effectively used the information provided to create lessons that were well thought out and grade level appropriate. She put in the time to prepare for each day of learning. She accepted constructive feedback, was able to reflect and use it to make necessary improvements. She planned with the reading specialist that pushes into the classroom during guided reading. She was able to prepare lessons that utilized support staff within the classroom during math. This allowed her to do more small group guided lessons and better meet the needs of a variety of students. Gombert Elementary has an extremely diverse population of learners including our mainstreamed IEP students and ELL students. Morgan demonstrated the ability to plan appropriate instruction that supports student progress in learning and is appropriate for the developmental level of her students. Morgan employed a variety of strategies, including Kagan Cooperative Learning, small group guided lessons, and projects to balance the variety of needs of our students. Morgan actively participated in problem solving meetings and IEP meetings that also helped to focus on student progress. Part of Morgans experience included an impact study. She chose to complete this during the geometry unit for math. Morgan created a pretest and posttest that corresponded with the unit learning targets. She used the results of the pretest to develop lessons based on student needs. Morgan implemented small and large group activities in addition to direct instruction. After her focused lessons, students demonstrated a better understanding of the key unit concepts. Morgan was successful in using various modes of learning in the classroom. She felt comfortable fluctuating between whole class and small group instruction throughout the day. She was extremely capable in managing these different types of settings.