TO: FROM:

WHOM IT MAY CONCERN Ronald Sallade, Student Teacher Supervisor, School of Education, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa Employment Recommendation for Leah Jones, Student Teacher, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, Spring Semester 2013 April 11, 2013

SUBJECT:

DATE:

This is a letter of recommendation enthusiastically supporting employment for Leah Jones, a student teacher at Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, who will be a fully certified Master's Degree level teacher in May 2013. I have been Leahs student teaching supervisor during the th spring semester 2013. Leah's student teaching assignment has been three sections of 7 grade th English Language Arts and three sections of 7 grade reading and literacy at Goodrell Middle School, a comprehensive middle school serving the north east side of Des Moines, Iowa. In brief, Leah is a very successful, intentional teacher: setting her lessons in context; providing direct instruction in a stimulating and effective manner; engaging students in an exciting, purposeful way; using a variety of instructional approaches; appropriately checking for students understanding; and re-teaching as needed. Leah has a growing teacher presence. She creates an orderly, active, positive classroom environment and puts forth great effort to achieve her desired outcome. Her students are engaged, and her classroom is well managed. She conducts herself as a professional in every respect. She holds herself accountable for learning and accomplishes a great deal. She intentionally seeks opportunities to communicate with students on a very personal level. Ms. Jones' lesson plans are well prepared and interconnect appropriately with the course curriculum; they are also consistently aligned with the Iowa Core Curriculum. In preparing lessons, Leah has a thorough knowledge of the text and relevant vocabulary. She seeks and uses supplemental materials from resource books, the Internet, and the library, or creates them herself when what she needs is unavailable. For her language arts classes, she planned and implemented unit plans concerning persuasion and writing traits that involved individual, partner and group work. In her reading classes, Leah focuses on vocabulary instruction and matching readers to books that will help them deeply engage in reading. Leah very ably employs a variety of instructional strategies such as writing to learn, think alouds, modeling, guided practice, collaborative work, oral discussions and presentations. Leah also makes efficient use of assessment. She administered a pretest before she began the persuasion unit, and used that data to determine instruction during the unit. In addition to a variety of summative assessments, Leah constantly uses formative assessment to drive and modify her instruction as needed. Students are quite responsive to Leah. Students benefit from positive, spontaneous, interactive rapport with her. Leah demonstrates a measured self-confidence. Students know that she is helping them and readily accept her instruction. Leah and her students obviously benefit from mutual respect. Her students are comfortable with her, have a high opinion of her, and willingly follow her instruction. Ms. Jones' interpersonal skills (active listening, clearly understood voice, effective eye contact) are especially effective and obviously an important part of her communication with students. I am quite impressed by Leahs easy, interactional repartee with students, her ability to capture and synthesize students ideas during discussion, as well as her ability to concurrently record students ideas on the overhead. Typically, those abilities are evident later in a teachers career. Leah is quite collaborative in her approach. She has been part of an instructional team, which includes four other professionals, and she has shared resources very effectively with those teachers.

In short, Leah is an exceptionally effective, successful teacher. She has the decided commitment and will make a major difference. As a student teacher, Leah is impressive. Leah is talented academically, earning a 4.00 GPA while pursuing her Masters at Drake University. Concurrent with her intelligence and teaching abilities, Ms. Jones is a mature and socially appropriate professional. I believe Leah is an exceptionally good candidate for th th placement in that she is certified for all language arts 5 through 12 grade, as well as reading for th th 5 through 12 grade. She also plans to finish her K-12 ESL/ELL endorsement within the next year. Leah is interested in becoming involved with the school theatre program, the student leadership program, Battle of the Books teams, and the school newspaper or yearbook. I recommend Leah Jones for any teaching position for which she is qualified and certified. If representatives from school districts have questions or would like more information, they are invited to contact me personally. Ronald Sallade, Ph. D. th 3715 SW 28 Street Des Moines, IA 50321-2024 515.285.6219 Home 515.249.5627 Daytime Mobile

RonaldSall@aol.com