Hello all.
I will again be updating this website once I begin the next school year, but for the rest of the summer, I'm only going to be posting to my OTHER website:
meanderings-of-the-mind.blogspot.com
There, you can read about some of the excitement in my personal life. :-D
Thanks for reading!
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Creating Effective Management Strategies
Classroom management was something that I felt that I had little understanding of when I first started my internship last fall. When the beginning of the school year started up, my schedule was chaotic, my assistants tried to go by last year's schedule and routine, and I was trying to figure out how to manage the various behaviors of my students and how to integrate a class-wide management system that my assistants would buy into. Unfortunately, the first few months were somewhat tense, as my assistants would try to implement their own ideas of classroom management over mine. Some of their ideas were good, and others were....well, not my ideal. We dealt with a lot of interruptions to teaching time, as some of my assistants would actually interrupt my lessons to deal with what they thought were offensive misbehaviors. It took the whole first half of the school year to finally figure this out, and to come up with a solution that my assistants and I could all work with.
My goal for next year? To have all of this stuff figured out BEFORE the assistants walk through the door, and to make sure that before the students arrive, we are all on board and understand what the expectations are. Also, I want to have a better understanding of what might occur in the classroom, and this can be accomplished by talking to teachers who have previously had my students, and carefully reading IEPs. More than anything, I want to avoid the chaos and feeling of stress that was present those first few months, and make my classroom a well-managed and stress free area from day one.
My goal for next year? To have all of this stuff figured out BEFORE the assistants walk through the door, and to make sure that before the students arrive, we are all on board and understand what the expectations are. Also, I want to have a better understanding of what might occur in the classroom, and this can be accomplished by talking to teachers who have previously had my students, and carefully reading IEPs. More than anything, I want to avoid the chaos and feeling of stress that was present those first few months, and make my classroom a well-managed and stress free area from day one.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Instructional Strategies
This last year, using a variety of instructional strategies was something that proved to be a difficulty. While I had dreams of varying my classroom instruction and using a large bag of strategies to help student learning, I never was able to finally get things settled enough to actually fully integrate them into my daily plans. I felt like I was sort of flying by the seat of my pants, so to speak, and used a lot of energy to get lessons off the ground, manage the classroom, and resolve student or assistant issues. Generally speaking, I used direct instruction very regularly, and then threw in other strategies when I could. My classroom overall could have benefited tremendously from a wider variety of strategies, especially for some of my students who functioned at a higher academic level.
Anyway, next year I want to greatly increase my use of different strategies in the classroom, and make more of an effort to use them regularly. I would especially like to incorporate more cooperative learning opportunities, as well as some discovery learning strategies.
Anyway, next year I want to greatly increase my use of different strategies in the classroom, and make more of an effort to use them regularly. I would especially like to incorporate more cooperative learning opportunities, as well as some discovery learning strategies.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Technology in the Classroom
For this blog entry, I hunted down a website dealing with technology and special education. This website can be found at www.techlearning.com.
This was a nifty website. Some of the links that can be found include Digital Learning Environments, Model Intelligent Classrooms, and 21st Century Connections. The websites that you can link to are full of great ideas and lots of inspiration. However, at techlearning.com, I found one article that I particularly liked. The article was entitled "Assisting the Special Needs Student Through Technology". A direct link to this article can be found here. This article reminded me so much of what was covered in our technology classes through Pacific. However, I found it to be a great reminder of how common technology can be a great help to our students, and how some of the most basic programs can be utilized in many, many ways. If you look at the article, there is a great table that gives suggestions for different technologies that can be used with students who have various disabilities. I found this table to be one of the most interesting aspects of the article. The suggestions listed seemed like common sense (but, as we all know, sometimes it's the simple things that we don't think of right away).
Anyway, I found this website and this article to be quite interesting, and hope that it can be helpful or interesting to someone else as well. :-)
This was a nifty website. Some of the links that can be found include Digital Learning Environments, Model Intelligent Classrooms, and 21st Century Connections. The websites that you can link to are full of great ideas and lots of inspiration. However, at techlearning.com, I found one article that I particularly liked. The article was entitled "Assisting the Special Needs Student Through Technology". A direct link to this article can be found here. This article reminded me so much of what was covered in our technology classes through Pacific. However, I found it to be a great reminder of how common technology can be a great help to our students, and how some of the most basic programs can be utilized in many, many ways. If you look at the article, there is a great table that gives suggestions for different technologies that can be used with students who have various disabilities. I found this table to be one of the most interesting aspects of the article. The suggestions listed seemed like common sense (but, as we all know, sometimes it's the simple things that we don't think of right away).
Anyway, I found this website and this article to be quite interesting, and hope that it can be helpful or interesting to someone else as well. :-)
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Learning in Context
After looking over the chapter on learning in context, there is one problem from this last year that stands out above all of the rest. It's a problem that deals entirely with behavior, and how to use reinforcements/punishments/behavior shaping etc. effectively.
I had one little sixth grader, an adorable little boy who could knock you over with his charm and affection. However, once we got to know him better, we began to realize that he had some significant behavior issues. We had extensive problems throughout the school year with temper tantrums, refusals to participate, and disruptive behavior such as talking, singing, and randomly running around the classroom, climbing on his desk, or moving furniture around. We tried EVERYTHING with this kiddo. I worked extensively with the behavior specialist, playing around with ideas and trying just about anything that sounded workable. Our first challenge was to find activities or things that were reinforcing to him. This was really difficult, as we would stumble across things that would work for a day, and then his desired behavior would stop. This little guy would completely throw the good behavior out the window, and ask us to give us his reward, because it's HIS. So, hmm...we didn't give up on this immediately, but after repeated failures (note: weeks upon weeks), we decided to try something different. As a matter of fact, we tried about 10 different somethings before we landed upon our last attempt. This involved a very complex system in which he could earn up to three stars for each period of the school day, and for each period, he could earn up to five cents worth of school store coupons. If he earned so many stars for each half of the day, he could earn additional coupons. This seemed to work, sort of. Unfortunately, we only had this system to utilize for about a month before the school year was up. We definitely had our ups and downs, but even as I type this, I'm at a loss for how to teach this student how to use appropriate behavior. It's such a mystery with this one! I wish I knew how to tap into what would really motivate him and reinforce him.
I had one little sixth grader, an adorable little boy who could knock you over with his charm and affection. However, once we got to know him better, we began to realize that he had some significant behavior issues. We had extensive problems throughout the school year with temper tantrums, refusals to participate, and disruptive behavior such as talking, singing, and randomly running around the classroom, climbing on his desk, or moving furniture around. We tried EVERYTHING with this kiddo. I worked extensively with the behavior specialist, playing around with ideas and trying just about anything that sounded workable. Our first challenge was to find activities or things that were reinforcing to him. This was really difficult, as we would stumble across things that would work for a day, and then his desired behavior would stop. This little guy would completely throw the good behavior out the window, and ask us to give us his reward, because it's HIS. So, hmm...we didn't give up on this immediately, but after repeated failures (note: weeks upon weeks), we decided to try something different. As a matter of fact, we tried about 10 different somethings before we landed upon our last attempt. This involved a very complex system in which he could earn up to three stars for each period of the school day, and for each period, he could earn up to five cents worth of school store coupons. If he earned so many stars for each half of the day, he could earn additional coupons. This seemed to work, sort of. Unfortunately, we only had this system to utilize for about a month before the school year was up. We definitely had our ups and downs, but even as I type this, I'm at a loss for how to teach this student how to use appropriate behavior. It's such a mystery with this one! I wish I knew how to tap into what would really motivate him and reinforce him.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Learning, Cognition, and Memory
The first needs analysis that I am going to do is going to focus on how my teaching strategies affected learning, cognition and memory in my classroom. This topic seems broad to me, so to make is simpler for myself, I am going to break it down and list some of the areas in which I think improvements could be made.
Learning: Learning seemed to be a scattered problem, with only certain students struggling with this process. Most of my students were able to learn what was expected of them in a reasonable time. However, a few of my students struggled consistently in this area. The main problem that I saw as a hindrance to learning was behavioral issues. One student in particular made very little progress the last half of the year. He was having major issues in his personal life, and made little effort when he was in my classroom. Being successful was not important to him, nothing motivated him, and nothing phased him. What to do? I believe he is very capable of learning, but was being held back by his behavior.
Cognition: Hmm. In my classroom, several of my students had a hard time thinking about things in many different ways. This could be due in part to some of the severe cognitive disabilities that some of my students had, but it could also be due in part to not offering as many opportunities to think about things in lots of different ways. Several of my students with autism had a very difficult time "thinking outside the box", and while I worked with them extensively on this (with some successes, I might add!), I don't know if this is exactly what this category is talking about. Overall, however, I wish that I had had more ideas about how to better encourage my students to think about things in different ways. I have lots of ideas when it comes to teaching resource or general education, but when it comes to Life Skills, I'm a little stumped.
Memory: I had a lot of difficulty in two areas concerning memory this year, those being math and reading. I taught two girls in math, both of whom functioned at about the second grade level. Both girls were learning how to add and subtract with carrying and borrowing. We worked on this skill for the entire year, and while I was able to add to their skill level, there were serious difficulties when it came to one of my students being able to remember the necessary steps. For the entire year, she consistently would remember, and forget, all of the steps for adding and subtracting with carrying and borrowing. When given numerous reminders, she was able to be successful, but she was rarely able to cue herself to follow the appropriate steps. This proved to be frustrating not only for her, but for me, as it made the math process much slower. In reading, I was teaching two students a set of pre-determined sight words and the letters of the alphabet. For the 5 months that I worked with these kiddos, very little improvement was made. They didn't seem to retain anything for more than a day or two, and trying to find ways in which to help them remember was difficult and frustrating. I tried to find ways in which to make the words and letters meaningful, but often, the students remembered the wrong thing. For example, one of my students would see a letter and remember the word I associated with the letter, such as saying Queen when he saw a Q. For the life of him, that poor guy could not remember that it was a Q. I tried various strategies with both kids, but nothing seemed to stick. Coming back after vacations was like starting at square one, with almost nothing being retained.
Learning: Learning seemed to be a scattered problem, with only certain students struggling with this process. Most of my students were able to learn what was expected of them in a reasonable time. However, a few of my students struggled consistently in this area. The main problem that I saw as a hindrance to learning was behavioral issues. One student in particular made very little progress the last half of the year. He was having major issues in his personal life, and made little effort when he was in my classroom. Being successful was not important to him, nothing motivated him, and nothing phased him. What to do? I believe he is very capable of learning, but was being held back by his behavior.
Cognition: Hmm. In my classroom, several of my students had a hard time thinking about things in many different ways. This could be due in part to some of the severe cognitive disabilities that some of my students had, but it could also be due in part to not offering as many opportunities to think about things in lots of different ways. Several of my students with autism had a very difficult time "thinking outside the box", and while I worked with them extensively on this (with some successes, I might add!), I don't know if this is exactly what this category is talking about. Overall, however, I wish that I had had more ideas about how to better encourage my students to think about things in different ways. I have lots of ideas when it comes to teaching resource or general education, but when it comes to Life Skills, I'm a little stumped.
Memory: I had a lot of difficulty in two areas concerning memory this year, those being math and reading. I taught two girls in math, both of whom functioned at about the second grade level. Both girls were learning how to add and subtract with carrying and borrowing. We worked on this skill for the entire year, and while I was able to add to their skill level, there were serious difficulties when it came to one of my students being able to remember the necessary steps. For the entire year, she consistently would remember, and forget, all of the steps for adding and subtracting with carrying and borrowing. When given numerous reminders, she was able to be successful, but she was rarely able to cue herself to follow the appropriate steps. This proved to be frustrating not only for her, but for me, as it made the math process much slower. In reading, I was teaching two students a set of pre-determined sight words and the letters of the alphabet. For the 5 months that I worked with these kiddos, very little improvement was made. They didn't seem to retain anything for more than a day or two, and trying to find ways in which to help them remember was difficult and frustrating. I tried to find ways in which to make the words and letters meaningful, but often, the students remembered the wrong thing. For example, one of my students would see a letter and remember the word I associated with the letter, such as saying Queen when he saw a Q. For the life of him, that poor guy could not remember that it was a Q. I tried various strategies with both kids, but nothing seemed to stick. Coming back after vacations was like starting at square one, with almost nothing being retained.
Welcome!
Welcome! I am a graduate student at Pacific University in Oregon, and am in the process of completing my master's degree in Special Education. Over the course of the last year, I have had the amazing opportunity to teach Life Skills to a fantastic group of middle schoolers. The experience taught me more than I could ever have imagined, and as I look back on the past year, I realize that there are many things that I need to do differently when I teach Life Skills again.
As part of a class I am taking for my master's degree, I will be writing about various aspects of my teaching in this last year, and offering needs analysis based on my teaching experiences. Each blog entry will cover a different topic, and will give me an opportunity to analyze important aspects of my teaching, and to come up with strategies to make my classroom a better place for my students. If you have any suggestions, please comment!! I welcome any advice/personal experience/or insights you might have. :-)
As part of a class I am taking for my master's degree, I will be writing about various aspects of my teaching in this last year, and offering needs analysis based on my teaching experiences. Each blog entry will cover a different topic, and will give me an opportunity to analyze important aspects of my teaching, and to come up with strategies to make my classroom a better place for my students. If you have any suggestions, please comment!! I welcome any advice/personal experience/or insights you might have. :-)
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