SPED class: Week 14

Remember when I said that last week was the last week of this class? Well I lied. It's this week. 
Not really much to say about this week. The main thing that we did was work on a case study about a potentially learning challenged child. The main points/objectives for the week were:

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

To just sum up my experience in this class I'd just like to say that it was not easy. There were many days when I felt confused with the set-up of the computer software and due dates in the beginning. Overall though the general layout made more sense to me once I got used to it. The group that I got assigned to work with was really good and very beneficial to my learning. My only real beef with this class was that we did a lot of case studies. I do not feel that that was very beneficial to me. I would personally like to have seen more assignments that would teach us about special education, the history of it, and primarily how to teach for it. We had a little bit of that, mostly from the textbook, but I just wish the class was more focused on that. It felt more like it was a giant court case study. I wish there were opportunities to work with children with disabilities.To actually get out in the field and to see how to teach them. I guess mostly it's just trial and error.  

Anyhow, overall an ok class. Online has never been my favorite and it probably never will. Face to face interaction will over trump the latter. Thank you to those 5 people from my class that may or may not be reading this blog post! It's been a pleasure letting you know what I've learned:)

I hope each and every one of you has a very merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a happy New Year!! 

Catch ya on the flip side;P

SPED class: Week 12

Well hello there! Welcome to the LAST week of SPED 310 blogging! What a wild ride we've had fellow bloggers and readers, am I right?! Well here it is, for the FINAL time:

Spiritual reminder:
"There are times when we have to step into the darkness in faith, confident that God will place solid ground beneath our feet once we do. And so I accepted gladly, knowing that God would provide." - President Dieter F. Uchtdorf ("The Why of Priesthood Service," general conference, April 2012)

Course objectives for 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.

I also completed my last simulation report too! This last one was on speech impediments.

Fluency Disorder Simulation (Stuttering):
The two tasks that I decided to do for this activity were: 

• While stuttering order a book or request help or something else you need with a live person at a help desk or at a service counter.
• While stuttering ask for help at a store.... and then ask the clerk/sales person 1-2 questions about the item you are shopping for

As you can maybe imagine I received a couple of looks when I stuttered a whole lot. However, I received a lot fewer then I expected. People seemed to be very understanding and even patient of me taking longer to say something. Stuttering is a more common occurrence then other handicaps I feel. I stutter quite a bit already whenever I am anxious or when I am trying to express something with a great level of emotion and my mind gets ahead of my lips and tongue. This simulation was a little easier for me to do because I already do it a little without encouragement. I did the tasks above without much difficulty. I asked for help finding a book, saying my /b/ for about 3 seconds before I said the actual word. I felt more frustration within myself when I felt like I could not adequately express what I was trying to say to someone. When I stutter in real life the same thing occurs. Sometimes I feel the words on the tip of my tongue but I just can't voice them. I have to pause just to let my brain and vocal chords keep in track. It's a bummer really, stuttering. Quite a few people in my family have it too. They have it worse then myself. My father has it especially bad, always has since he was a kid. My grandfather has a very noticeable lisp, which I used to have when I was younger as well. My younger brother couldn't say his r's properly when he was little. My brother went to speech therapy to correct that issue. As for me, I just mostly grew out of it. 
This experience has taught me to learn better patience when speaking with someone. It also helped me to see how patient others are to speech impediments. Way to go society!

Because this is my last post (for this class/forever) I want to wish everyone Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and a Happy New Year! Hope this next year brings you all of the love and happiness that you all rightfully deserve:)

xoxo Hayley

SPED class: Week 11

Hidy-ho neighbor!

Welcome to yet another week of SPED 310! I'm going to focus mainly on the two simulations that I did last week (because I'm late in this blog post I actually mean the week of November 28 through December 2, so the week before this past week that we're finishing up today). Also, sorry for the lateness of this blog post:) 

First things first, here are the main topics that we focused on in lesson 12:

• A sensitivity to the needs of and compassion for those with special needs.

• A multidisciplinary view of exceptionality, cultural differences, individual and family dynamics, poverty, and abuse.

And the overall lesson focus was:


"There are times when we have to step into the darkness in faith, confident that God will place solid ground beneath our feet once we do. And so I accepted gladly, knowing that God would provide." - President Dieter F. Uchtdorf ("The Why of Priesthood Service," general conference, April 2012).
Well, now to the simulations, IE, "putting ourselves in the other guys shoes":


Visual Impairment SimulationThe mask that I chose to wear, or I guess the one that was available, was the mask that looked as if it had a fog over it, to simulate problems with the lens (i.e., astigmatism) – causes loss of visual acuity. I felt totally lost most the time. I could not make out any actual faces, just blobs of color that I knew was a person. Unless they were directly in front of me I could not tell what they were wearing or how their hair might be styled. From far away all I saw were masses of moving color. Lights looked like unfocused, glowing orbs and details became impossible to notice. It was like I was walking through a fog. I definitely did not enjoy it. I felt confused when someone was talking, trying to put a blurry face to a name and wondering if maybe they were giving me funny, confused looks too. I can see how this impairment would be an issue in daily life, as well as in the classroom. Our visual perception of the world is a big factor on how we make relationships and help us to solve problems. I can only imagine how complete blindness must set you back a few years in your social growth and cognitive development. Overall though, I found this a very rewarding experience. It helped me to relate more to the difficulties that individuals with this handicap might go through and what I, as teacher, can do to help these students who might have this issue. 


Learning Disability SimulationFor this assignment I chose to do two separate tasks with my "learning disability". 

• Order a book or request help or something else you need with a live person at help desk or at a service counter.

• Ask for help at the library. Repeat back part of the directions for help to ensure clarification

When I was doing both tasks the rules were to not use words with an /l/ or an /n/ in it. This task was EXTREMELY difficult. I had to pause and think before I even spoke to word my questions correctly. At first I felt like I had a speech impediment. SO many words have l's and n's in them!
So for the first task I asked for help to find the MC. (I felt like it was safer then asking where the Manwaring Center was per both words have an "n" in them). I simply asked, "Where is the MC?" no l's or n's in sight! Ok, so maybe that was too easy, haha! So I decided to ask for help to find a notebook at the bookstore. I went up to the clerks desk and said, "Hi! Where are the books that you take...(then I paused because no matter what word I thought of it had an /n/ in it). I made the motion of taking notes on my hand. The clerk caught the hint and said, "take notes?" I nodded and said yes. I continued by attempting to describe it, "It has curvy hooks that keep it together. What's that..?" The clerk looked at me like I was an idiot, haha, it wasn't the best experience. I did the motion of a spiral to give the description of a spiral bound notebook. She caught on again, "A spiral notebook?" "Yes", I exclaimed. Then she pointed me in the direction of where they were. I couldn't even say "thanks you because it had an /n/ in it! So to further on my embarrassment I said "merci"! Hahaha! But man, it was kinda funny. I feel though that if I actually had a learning disability, where I just could not find the words, that I would not feel the same towards the situation. The same goes for people who have English as their second language. It must be hard for them to communicate with solely English speaking people.
I had a similar situation for the second scenario as well. I got a lot of weird looks and confusion when I tried to articulate what it was that I was trying to say. This experience made me really appreciate no having this challenge in my life.

I learned quite a bit from doing these simulations. My eyes have more so been open to the difficulties and challenges that occur with these handicaps.

Until next week!

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!!