Learning simulation

I have been so grateful for this course.  I have learned so much from the things I have done.  The last simulation I had to do was the learning disability one.  I never realized how hard it is for children who are just struggling to find the words to express themselves.  We can find words, we just don't know exactly WHAT to say, but they struggle with what to say as well what words to use in saying it.  I am grateful for the understanding I have gained during this experiment.  I found it extremely hard to communicate without many pauses and interruptions in the flow of my words since I was so busy thinking about what letters I could not use.

Developmentally delayed children

Reflection Week 14

Developmentally delayed

The official definition of a child who has a developmental delay is a child who is age three through nine who has developmental delays in one or more of the major developmental areas.  The clinical definition states that the child may have a developmental and that it could last throughout their life.  I think that is interesting that they are so different.

So many of these delays can come from the pregnancy of the mother or untreated conditions as a baby.  Infections or drugs or alcohol during the pregnancy can cause many of these conditions. 

It is so sad that mothers could adversely affect the child throughout their lifetime.  Sometimes it is unknowingly, and sometimes it is by choice.

Through developmental monitoring and screening, these problems can be diagnosed and the child can begin to be treated.

Responding to a child's behavior

Reflection Week 13

How a teacher responds to student behavior can make all the difference in how efficient the class is and how much learning takes place.  The root word of discipline is disciple, or “follower of a teacher”.  I love that.  If we can learn to be shepherds for our students to follow instead of sheepherders who drive the sheep from behind, we could find so much more success.

Here are just a few thoughts from the chapter I really liked.

Teachers who talk with and treat students with respect are likely to be respected. 

Having clear expectations and establishing classroom routines encourage positive behavior through creation of a positive learning environment.

The most effective prevention strategy is to have a positive and caring environment

Simulations

I was surprised that the wheelchair simulation was not as hard as I thought it would be and the visual simulation was harder than I thought it would me.  It is opposite than what I was expecting.  I found that half-way through the visual simulation, I was impatient and frustrated.  It was hard to drive and even to talk with my daughter because I had to turn my whole body in order to see her.

During the wheelchair simulation, I was worried that my daughter and husband would dump me out when we were going across some grass.  It was difficult to use the bathroom but not as difficult as I thought it would be to move through the building.  My family was sweet to help me with these assignments, but didn't miss the opportunity to take pictures and have some fun with me.  It ended up being a fun experiment to do.  

For the stuttering simulation, I agreed with some of my classmates that this would be difficult to fake.  I have a large family and I was worried that if I tried to do the stuttering with people in the community, it might end up being one of my children's friends, or someone my husband works with or has treated medically.  They would know that I am faking it and I felt it put me at risk of looking like I was making fun of people who have a stuttering problem.  In order to complete this activity, I just did the exercises with my husband and children.  I have an uncle who has had a serious stuttering problem and while I don't understand how he feels, I don't want to risk making him feel like I am being disrespectful.
 I just cannot get over the idea that these activities are helpful for us to understand how someone may feel, but they just don't seem honest.  Before I was married, I had the strong feeling that I needed to make sure I was acting with integrity always because I didn't want anyone to get the wrong impression of me.  During the wheelchair activity, I know that some of the professors feel it is important to let people know that you are involved in a simulation activity so wrong impressions are not made.  I tend to agree with them.

Simulations

I was surprised that the wheelchair simulation was not as hard as I thought it would be and the visual simulation was harder than I thought it would me.  It is opposite than what I was expecting.  I found that half-way through the visual simulation, I was impatient and frustrated.  It was hard to drive and even to talk with my daughter because I had to turn my whole body in order to see her.

During the wheelchair simulation, I was worried that my daughter and husband would dump me out when we were going across some grass.  It was difficult to use the bathroom but not as difficult as I thought it would be to move through the building.  My family was sweet to help me with these assignments, but didn't miss the opportunity to take pictures and have some fun with me.  It ended up being a fun experiment to do.  

For the stuttering simulation, I agreed with some of my classmates that this would be difficult to fake.  I have a large family and I was worried that if I tried to do the stuttering with people in the community, it might end up being one of my children's friends, or someone my husband works with or has treated medically.  They would know that I am faking it and I felt it put me at risk of looking like I was making fun of people who have a stuttering problem.  In order to complete this activity, I just did the exercises with my husband and children.  I have an uncle who has had a serious stuttering problem and while I don't understand how he feels, I don't want to risk making him feel like I am being disrespectful.
 I just cannot get over the idea that these activities are helpful for us to understand how someone may feel, but they just don't seem honest.  Before I was married, I had the strong feeling that I needed to make sure I was acting with integrity always because I didn't want anyone to get the wrong impression of me.  During the wheelchair activity, I know that some of the professors feel it is important to let people know that you are involved in a simulation activity so wrong impressions are not made.  I tend to agree with them.

Evaluating Student Learning

Week 12  Evaluating Student Learning

Students with learning disabilities may need accommodations before, during and after the test in order to evaluate appropriately.

Accommodations before the test include things like study guides, practice tests, and teaching them test-taking skills and strategies.  During a test, there are things like giving them alternative questions, an alternative test site, or doing things like reading the question aloud to them.  After the test, written comments in place of a letter or number grade, changing the grading criteria to give them a score based on things like improvement, or changing the grades to pass/fail grades or checklists can more appropriately show where the student is.  Instead of report-card grading, rubrics or differentiated report cards that show individualized progression toward IEPs can better assess the progress of a special needs child.

F.A.T. City Video

Thoughts and things I learned about the F.A.T. city video.

Processing

Distractible and lack of focus are not the same thing.  They are very different.  Distracted children are children who are focusing on everything, and children that lack focus aren’t focusing on anything.

Learning disabled children need more processing time.  One way to lessen the anxiety is to let them know that you will not call on them unless you are in front of their desk.  That way, they won’t use all their energy trying to avoid the teacher and stressing about getting called on.

Motivation

Learning disabled children don’t want to take risks because they are so stressed about not understanding what is being said and things are moving at a pace that is too quick for them to process.

Learning disabled children don’t like surprises.  They don’t like to know not know what is coming up next.

Common attitudes of teachers that are not appropriate with a learning disabled child are to:

1.        Look at it harder (tell them to try harder to do something they are not capable of doing)

2.       Bribe or offer to give the child something in order to try to force them to something they are not capable of doing.

3.       Take things away (like recess) for not accomplishing a task they are unable to do.

4.       Blame the victim

Perception

Children who struggle with LD need direct instruction.  They need a teacher to tell them one on one what they need to do.

Vocabulary is not the answer to comprehension, it is the background of the child. 

Visual motor connection:  the coordination of visual perceptual abilities and fine motor control.  Eye hand coordination.

Oral expression:  dysnomia happens to the learning disabled child.  It’s when they cannot come up with the word they want.

Associative task or cognitive task.  You can only do one cognitive task at a time, but can do more than one associative task at a time.  Speaking is usually an associative task for people, but for LD children, it is a cognitive task.  Kind of like driving when the conditions are bad.  Usually it is an associative process, but becomes a cognitive task when the weather is bad.  Speaking is usually an associative task for most people but if you cannot use the letter “n”, it becomes a cognitive process.

If they a bright person and you make it impossible for them to learn, they are quick to “turn someone else in” when they do something wrong.  When you give someone else a task and ignore a mistake, it bothers the LD child because they want to make sure everyone knows that they are not the only one who is struggling.

Give a LD child extra time to process and then call on them first since they may only have one answer.

Spatial orientation is a hard thing for LD children.  A “P” is only a “P” when it is going a certain direction.

Don’t tell a child that a task is easy when they cannot do it.

Don’t use rhetorical questions with children.  “How many times do I need to tell you to keep your hands to yourself?”  It is intimidating and there are no answers to the questions.  It breaks down communication.

When reading is a cognitive activity as opposed to an associative task, all the child’s energy and effort it put into decoding the words but not comprehension.

Many children need auditory input in addition to visual.  They cannot understand it until they hear it.

Fairness means every child gets what they need, not the same thing.  When teachers say that an LD child cannot have something because it is not possible to give the same thing for the other children, it is no different than saying that the child having a cardiac arrest cannot have CPR because the other children could not have it.  The fact is that the other children don’t need it.

Children learn more about honesty, truth, patriotism etc. based on the actions of parents and teachers more than all the reading or teaching in the world.

Differentiating Instruction Week 10

I loved learning about differentiating instruction this week.  To understand that there are ways to accomodate students by differentiating what is being taught, the process it is taught, and the different ways to evaluate students' learning was helpful in making an inclusive curriculum.  Some examples I really thought were helpful were selecting and sequencing example problems or situations, introducing new skills at different rates depending on past knowledge, providing instructional opportunities to help students practice or review concepts or skills, or organizing the way content is taught to accomodate different learning styles.
I am grateful for the many examples I have seen of teachers making accommodations for students who need extra help.  One teacher allowed a student to type instead of write to find out what he could actually do.  Another example was to have questions on a test read aloud to a student instead of having them read the problem themselves.  One last example was just seating children who might need extra help near the teacher during a test. 
This chapter was full of useful and insightful information.  There were many examples and illustrations of how to make accommodations and differentiate instruction to meet the educational needs of everyone.

Curriculum compounding and Gifted and Talented

There were two things I really liked about this unit.  I liked the idea of curriculum compacting and the programs for gifted and talented. 

When students become bored and things are repeated that they already know, they become “turned off” about school.  I would like to share an example of this.  We moved when my twins were going   1^st grade.  They had had a wonderful experience in kindergarten and felt challenged.  After a few months in their new school, I asked them what they liked most about school.  They paused for a moment and then said, “recess!!”  almost in unison.  I was shocked because of how much they loved school before.  I asked they why, and one of them had so much frustration that he became teary-eyed and said, “Everything my teacher tells me, MRS. GREEN ALREADY TOLD ME!”  He was so anxious to learn and became so frustrated that he began to give up because he wasn’t learning anything new but was required to sit quietly while the teacher repeated things he had already learned.  He did not qualify for the gifted and talented, but he could have used the curriculum compacting.  In the school they were in for kindergarten had a philosophy of pushing the students as far as they could go, understanding that not all of the students will be able to do everything, but offering the growth for them.  The new school focused on meeting minimum standards. 

I think students who are gifted and talented suffer much the same way.  I remember a “class clown” in junior high who ended up going to Purdue right out of high school.  I wonder why he was misbehaving.  I am grateful for these concepts and programs that allow for learning for students who would otherwise shut down in much the same way as a student who is not understanding anything.