SPED class: Week 10

This past week was Thanksgiving week. Huzzah! 
I ate SOOOO much food. It was probably the best thing ever:)

Here are the main points that I learned this week:

1. A sensitivity to the needs of and compassion for those with special needs.
2. A multidisciplinary view of exceptionality, cultural differences, individual and family dynamics, poverty, and abuse.

Going off of that we learned a lot about reading strategies this week. I found it quite helpful. Here's just a few of the strategies that I learned that I found the most helpful:

• Teaching independent learning strategies
• Select successful strategies
1. Decide whether individual, small or large-group problem
2. Assess current strategy usage
• Begins with an assessment of how well your students can currently perform a skill
3. Clarify expectations
• Has the potential of empowering your students because they enable them to learn and succeed in and out of school on their own, without getting too much help from others
4. Demonstrate strategy use
• Carefully explain the process
• Present both positive and negative examples
• Ask frequent questions to monitor student understanding
5. Encourage students to memorize strategy steps
6. Provide guided and independent practice 
7. Administer post-tests
• If more than 20% still need extra help--->small/large group

Hope you have a WONDERFUL week!! The semester/year is almost done! Hang in there!

SPED class: Week 9

Welp, here it is. The creme de la creme. The most perfect of perfect of perfect. The greatest blog post EVERRRR!!!! 

Ok, just kidding. This is just another post on what I have learned this past week in my special education class. For your viewing pleasure:

CHAPTER 6

• Characteristics
• Social relationships
• Communication
• Students interests
• Student stress
• Learning needs and rate
• Maintenance of learned skills
• Generalization of learning
• Instructional supports
• Responding to behavior
• Fostering social interactions 
• Communicating with students
• Match expectations to instruction
• Collaborate with families
• Enlist natural support systems
• Access assistive technology

CHAPTER 9

• Accommodations when teaching subject-area content
• Organizing content
• Activating background knowledge
• Teaching terms and concepts
• Communicating clearly
• Accommodations with special needs in basic skills instruction
• Teaching preskills 
• Selecting and sequencing
• Rate of instruction of new skills
• Providing direct instruction and opportunities for practice and review

That's allllllll folks!!

SPED class: Week 8

Bonjour people of cyberspace!

This past week was one for the books. Not because of this class however. It was pretty interesting in different regards. But that story is for another time and another place. Here's the lovely bullet pointed summary of what I learned:

• STRESS & ADVERSITY ARE A PART OF LIFE
• As future teachers we will sometimes see students who come from very diverse backgrounds. 
• We need to remember that every student is special and is worth the love and care that our Heavenly Father would show them. 
• Brain Plasticity--->the ability to mold the brain
• Supply elements to a child's brain when they are young to help with brain plasticity
•  Can increase...
• Academic Performance
• Economic opportunity
• Health
• Resiliency
• Capacity to navigate life
• 1/3 of the worlds children never reach their full potential
• Children that are stimulated in their brain from a younger age show better educational, emotional and social growth. 
• Negative stress on the brain that restricts brain development:
• Toxic Stress--no buffer for stress, continuous high level of stress
• Positive Stress--supportive relationship, social network helps them fail well and built up resilience 
• Extraordinary Stress--tolerable stress (if love is provided) 
• YOU HAVE THE POWER TO CHANGE YOUR CIRCUMSTANCE
• SWIFT--advances equity and excellence for ALL through the promotion of five core domain areas to support grade level academic and social learning:
• Family and community partnership
• Inclusive education framework
• Inclusive policy structure and practice 
• Muti-tiered systems of support
• Administrative learning

HAVE A GREAT WEEK!!

SPED class: Week 7

Hello fellow educators!

Welcome to week 7 of SPED310!! WOOOO!!

Here's what I learned this past week. Sorry for the smaller quantity of it. This past week was H-E-double hockey sticks. Stress was coming at me from every angle. Oh joy...anyway, here's what I learned, for your viewing pleasure:

• INCLUDE strategy
• Universal design
• A compatible design for everyone in the classroom, including for those children with special needs.
• Differentiated design
• A variety of teaching and learning strategies that are necessary to meet the range of needs evident in any given classroom
• Steps for INCLUDE strategy:
1. Identify classroom demands
2. Note students learning strengths and needs
3. Check for potential areas of student success
4. Look for potential problem areas
5. Use information to brainstorm ways to differentiate instruction
6. Differentiate instruction
7. Evaluate student progress

Some questions that I wondered about were:

• "How can you group all of your students for instruction in inclusive classrooms?"
• "How is an inclusive classroom managed?"
• "How can you evaluate instructional materials for inclusive classrooms?"

Thanks for reading!!