To Whom It May Concern:

It is my pleasure to write a letter in recommendation of Caroline Hand. Caroline was an

outstanding student teacher in my classroom this past spring semester. Her extensive background in
working with children was apparent as she quickly acclimated herself and demonstrated a desire to
get involved. Within the first few days she promptly established herself as a valued member of our
classroom community.
Caroline was enthusiastic and highly motivated to learn and perform to the best of her abilities.
She frequently worked long hours to help develop daily and weekly lesson plans and monitor
student progress. She asked for feedback and worked to incorporate ideas presented to her. She
was flexible, organized, well planned, and professional.
Caroline immediately began taking responsibility for math instruction of the Investigations
curriculum. She was able to develop the lesson plans, present the lessons, and follow up on the
assignments with the students. Caroline demonstrated and maintained high expectations and
rigorous learning, pushing the students in a caring and supportive manner to do their best with a
generous acceptance of mistakes. She employed a variety of instructional strategies to ensure all
children understood the math. In addition, she provided challenge math for those who already had
an understanding of the skills taught.
As the semester progressed, Caroline created and implemented many lessons in science, social
studies, and language arts. She developed a creative unit on punctuation with lessons that were both
interesting and educationally effective. In addition, she created a unit on the desert habitat using a
self-designed pre-assessment to establish goals for learning and guide her instruction. She carefully
monitored the student’s progress and made adept adjustments to the lessons to promote
understanding of both vocabulary and content. She also did an outstanding job teaching a
nonfiction reading and writing unit, carefully scaffolding the children as they learned to determine
importance, take notes, and paraphrase their reading as she taught them how to write an animal
report.
Caroline had to interact with a wide arrange of student abilities and needs among the 23 students
in this ELL inclusion class. She has excellent classroom management skills and the children
responded well to her enthusiasm, interest, and concern. Caroline is a keen observer of children and
was very perceptive in terms of the children’s emotional, academic, and social needs.
The design of the classroom allowed Caroline to have experiences working with the children as a
whole group, in small group lessons, and with individual instruction. She worked well with not only
the students, but also the classroom support staff and our parent volunteers. Working as part of our
second grade team, Caroline attended weekly planning meetings, PLC and staff meetings, and
participated in our spring conferences where was able to share information and insights about the
students.
I consider myself, and our students, very lucky to have had Caroline in the classroom and we
will miss her greatly! I highly recommend her without reservation. If you have any questions,
please feel free to contact me.

Pam Costello, M.Ed.

Brown School, One Jean Burke Drive, Natick, MA 01760
Pacostello@natickps.org