Week 8 Post

Three important points before watching the video that I thought were important to consider when having a parents teacher conference were, you need to know that a child acts differently when they are at home and at school, so you cant assume the child acts that way with their parents around. Another is that you need to understand the background and lifestyle of the family and the child. And last you should have work to provide to the parents, as an example of what you are telling them about their child.

After watching the video through the interactive website provided by WADSWORTH, called Home-School Communication, three things that I realize are that parents don't understand why children act the way they do in educational surroundings. Second is that a child's behavior and social activities needs to be discussed with the parents so that the parents can also impact their childs social behavior positively. Last I learned that you have to share with the parents the positives and negatives of their child, like in the video, his child really enjoyed writing their story or book and so the teacher was prepared to show the parents that work along with the work or environment that may have been a struggle to the child.

The most difficult part of parent teacher communication would be if a student is doing poorly with their work or causing problems, and the parents have no interest in the student. Parents who are not involved with their childs education make it that much harder for the teacher to deal with problems caused by or with that student. Telling a parent that their child has been the reason for disruption in class or telling them their child is doing poorly would be challenging because what parents dont want to hear positive things about their children.

Students with communication, language and speech disorders often excel at one or two things, because they lack in another. Students with communication disoders often have poor social skills, but could be extremely smart. Students with language disorders are also going to have poor social skills most likely because they cannot talk to their peers, they also will struggle with their school work because they are lacking one of the basic functions to get through school. Students with speech disorders will have the same difficulties as the students with communication disorders, they may have some other way of communication like sign language for students who are hearing impaired. Students with speech disorders with lack social skills but could still excel in academics. Students with autism usually need more intense support than students with communication, language and speech disorders. They are worked with at an extreme one on one basis and take a longer time to process some information than the typical student their age.

The parents of students with disabilities such as these would be interested in knowing what type of support and extra help their child is recieving. They would also like to know what modifications are being made for the child as well as the progress of their child in the classroom. They would be interested in knowing that their child is not falling behind or being pushed to the side during acitivities because they are not the typical student.


Kirk, S., Gallagher, J, Coleman, M., & Anastasiow, N. (2009). Educating Exceptional Children (12th ed.). Kentucky: Cengage Learning. Retrieved October 22, 2009, from http://college.cengage.com/education /kirk/educating/12e/resources/video_cases.html

* Citations are supposed to be indented on the second and third line but because of the format of blogger it wont allow me to do that.

Week Seven

This week at learn and serve I went to the library with the class for the first fourty five minutes. While they were in the library they each picked out a book off the counter to read for the week and then they watched a movie about the reading rainbow group. This movie taught them that they need to use teamwork and work together to get the work done. One the movie was over we went back to the classroom and two teachers came in to do a reading activity with the class. The learned three new verses to if you're happy and you know it, the verses had to do with being bothered. Telling them they should ignore, walk away or say please stop when they are being bothered by other students on the bus or in the hallways and classroom. The students enjoyed this activity. When they were finished they split into groups by their grade level in math. I worked with the goup of second graders on noticing patterns on number lines and filling in the missing numbers. Then they worked on subtraction. One boy named nick was totally in a different world and would not even repsond to any type of approach to the math problems I was asking him. Two other students I was working with needed help on the second worksheet which was subtraction. I got out the little wooden blocks and told them that if they counted out the first number in wooden blocks and took away the second next they would be left with the answer. This helped them both a lot and they finished the work quickly. Then I attempted to help Nick again and he just wanted me to tell him all the answers which I wouldn't do. So he got angry with me and gave up even more. When it was time to go to lunch I found out that he has just been put on medication for ADD, and the teacher does not understand why because he did not seem to need this medication, a little discipline would be just fine. This teacher worked with these students in the previous year as well beacuse it is a self contained class and she said that he was one of the top students coming out of school last year and is now in the bottom of the class since he has been put on this medication. The parents are trying to meet with the school as soon as possible to figure out what can be done to help the student but there has been no avaliabilty to meet with the educational team working to maximize the childs education.

Connection to Chapter 7:
Chapter seven is about communication and language. In my learn and serve class there is one boy who is classified as a kindergartener. He doesn't speak barely at all. If you tell him to say please or thank you he will repeat you occasionally but he won't tell you what he wants or ask for something before he does it. That makes it very difficult to work with him. The chapter talks about speech pathologist, and how they help is a students classroom. The student has been taken out of class multiple times to be worked with one on one as well as an aid coming in to try and work with the entire class, but targeting this student. He has began to act up lately by standing on chairs and doing this he knows are inappropriate, they believe that he is doing these things because he is attempting to communicate with the teachers and tell them what he wants. The problem with that is he continues to get in trouble. When you talk to the student he does adknowledge you, so he has an understanding of the language and he knows when he is being punished for doing wrong, he just doesn't have a sense of verbally communicating his thoughts and feelings.

Quiz Chapter Seven

She Stoops To Conqure:

Act One:

paltry

superfluous

stoutly

tedious

facetious

Act Two:

impudent

brazen

dissembler

hypocrisy

inoculation

Act Three:

confounded

brazen

stammering

sulle

ecod

Act Four:

laurels

rogue

coxcomb

haspicholls

izzard

Act Five:

mortifying

cursedly

gibbet

confoundedly

rebuke

Characters:

Hardcastle

Mrs Hardcastle

Kate Hardcastle

Tony Lumpkin

Constance Neville

What type of activity is this? This activity is an example of differentiated instruction which shows that there are is more than one way to engage students in an activity that in the end will teach them the same material.

How does it challenge you? This challenges us to think in different ways then we would using the typical styles of learning. Using multimodal learning reaches out to all students, and this may challenge us because to some people a different mode of learning would be more beneficial but you won't know what mode fits you best until you have tried more than one.

Who is our "audience" and what do they like? What kind of music, images, sounds? Our audience is a group of heterogeneous grouped high school students. Some of the students are gifted and talented while other are learning disabled, have IDD or ED and others are average students from general education classes. They like interesting images, popular upbeat music and attention grabbing sounds, like normal high school aged students would.

Podcasting:

What kind of activity is this? This is an example of differentiated learning like the previous activity was. It could also be considered a multimedia instructional activity, using your digital images and the podcasting to tell a story instead of writing down your story. This is a challenege because most students haven't used podcasting before and they had to deal with the technology and what to do.

How does it challenge you? This challenged us because we didn't know what technology to use and all our computers were different. Once we figured out how to use the technology aspect of this we were all worried about how we looked and sounded and what stories to tell.

What background knowledge do you need to complete this activity? You needed to know how to use your computer or ideo camera, you needed to know how to use energy in your voice to tell your story and you needed to know then how to upload this to blogger.

Chalkboard:

What kind of activity is this? This is an activity for students who learn better through hands on activities or artistic activities.

How does it challenge you? This challenged me because I had to look up the information and think classify each one, it wasn't something that I could do off the top of my head.

What background knowledge are you using to complete this activity? I used background knowledge to draw the shapes and to write some of the details and characteristics that I could remember from the reading and other discussions that we have had.

How much do you love this Blackboard compared to the other Blackboard? This blackboard is my friend, the other blackboard hates me. Hate may be a strong word but I really think its appropriate in this situation! I enjoy using technology but not when it doesn't cooperate with me. In cases like that I would rather just use a real blackboard because it is reliable and easy.

Chapter 6

1. When a child is causing disruptions within the classroom that significantly impact the education of other students, what rights do parents of these students have in trying to secure a better classroom environment for their child?

Parent involvement is dealt with through IDEA and tells parents their roles and rights in their child's education. When a student is disrupting the classroom to the extent that the education of other students in impacted the parents are to be notified if the disciplinary processes and actions being taken. They are also part of developing the child's IEP plan, this plan deals with the child's education, environment and behaviors. If a parent does not think their child is getting the best possible education or in the right classroom environment they are allowed to propose a change the their child's evaluation or IEP, with advanced notification to the school. This allows the parents to evaluate the child at home and give their impact on what is going on at school. If a child's being disruptive and the parents believe that the child needs to be put into a different environment they are allowed to suggest that at the meetings held to discuss their child's education.


2. What responsibility should the school and school district take to provide support to the classroom teacher, the child and the child's family when behavior difficulties are preventing learning?

The school district should have a disciplinary plan put in place for when a child acts out this way, the classroom teacher should be notified of what to do is this type of situation so that all educators and administrators are on the same page. The school can set up a way of notifying the family everyday of their child's behaviors and actions. At my first learn and serve placement there was a student who constantly acted out and was disruptive to the learning of other students. At the end of everyday, the teacher would write in a notebook to his family, she would put a smile face, sad face, ect. to tell how he was in general and make any other comments that the parents needed to know about for that day. This way they parents and the teacher are communicating in efforts to change these negative behaviors.


I chose this picture because it shows rather than just telling a child they have done something wrong the woman is discussing the problem with the little girl. If you tell at a student and punish them without making sure they are aware of what they have done and what the consequences will be they will not be able to correct their behaviors.

Week 5, Learn & Serve 9/29 and 10/6

When I went to learn and serve for the second week the class was getting ready to work on math when I got there. The class is a self-contained class and there are kindergartners, first and second graders. For math they split into their grades and work on different skills and worksheets. I was asked to work with the second grade group and that was a challenge to me. The students were reluctant to do the worksheets and some were more advanced than the others. They all wanted me to work with them at the same time and did not have any patients. I sent some of them to do math on the computers while I helped others with the worksheets. After that i walked around and tried to help the students keep their focus during a science lesson using the smart board.

In class on October 1st we went to the class room first and got assigned a card with a term or topic from the assigned chapter. Then we walked to the gorge and periodically stopped to discuss the topics we were given. This was to prepare us for our quiz and I think that it helped a lot but at the same time it was hard for people who are not auditory learners. The hike to the gorge was an interesting way to have class because we had different surroundings. I enjoyed the hike and the walk to Professor McLaughlin's house. When we threw a rock into the water to relieve our stress I thought that was an interesting task and I enjoyed it. Our assignment to take five pictures while we were walking to tell a story really got me to use my imagination and I enjoyed it. The reason that our professor chose to do this activity and have class outside was to get us thinking of different ways to teach children material. If you teach a child the same boring or traditional ways day in and day out they will begin to stop listening and not learn as efficiently.

A metaphor similar to the umbrella metaphor we were shown for students with IDD could be, Children with IDD are ovens, you turn the heart or intensity up as needed. With students with IDD their surrport system has 4 different levels of intensity. First in the Intermittent, which is needed support but support that is not present at all times, that would be like a low temperate, just warming something up. Second is limited which is support given on a regualr basis, third is extensive, which is ongoing regular involvement with the students. Last is the most intense type of support, this would be like cooking something that is froze and completely raw. This is called the pervasive level of support, where there is constant help provided for these students and this may also involve more than one staff member helping the student in more than one specialty area.

Today my learn and serve showed my a totally different side of the students. They were very misbehaved and had very short attention spans today. They went to the library and when they got back they sat on the carpet and were given instruction, which they didn't follow. They were split into three groups to combine math and science activities. I worked with small groups of students to pick out pictures to represent the seasons and put them on a circle which we cut into quarters. Then they had to write the seasons names and draw another picture to go with them. They were once again impatient, all wanting my help at the same time. They were also very protective of their work, they did not want the other students working at the table to see their work. The last two students I worked with brought me great challenge. One of them had very little to no verbal skills and the other student was at a very low level of abilities. I had to modify their assignments. For the student who had a low level of ability, I wrote the words for her and she traced them and I also talked to her about the weather and type of clothing you wear during the seasons rather than trying to have her memorize the names of the seasons. For the student who had very little vocal skills I showed him the picture and talked about the season while he repeated me, then I helped him draw pictures, I would draw and he would try and draw the same thing or he would guide my hand while I wrote or drew a picture. Learn and serve opened my eyes to the patients I will have to have and the different levels of ability that students of the same age group can truly have.

Connection to Chapter Five:
In class we adapted our lesson and learning enviornment by being given a term from the chapter, looking it up and leaving for the gorge. While we were hiking the gorge we walked a while then stopped and discuessed one groups term and continued on. This was also the questions to our quiz so for people who are not auditory learners, this could have been a difficult task. As we walked we learned more and more about the chapter and the questions that were going to be on our quiz.