Creating Goals

Hi there and welcome back!

Today’s blog entry is a little bit different from the rest because rather than focusing on the implementation of inclusive education, it will focus on the creation of effective goals for your students, especially when it comes time to create IPPS. The first thing to keep in mind about goals is that a ‘goal’ is more general and includes numerous ‘objectives’ which are essentially steps that teachers will use to achieve the “big” goal. Each goal usually contains three objectives that each have differing time lines. When writing goals there are five typical areas of focus, these areas are: self help skills, pro social skills, communication skills, academic skills, and work habits. When creating goals, it helps to consider any of these areas because it allows you as a teacher to create a goal that is going to significantly benefit the student. For example, if a teacher was interested in creating a goal about a student of hers who is consistently off task, and moving around the classroom when he should be working, then you would create a goal that focuses on his work habits. When writing goals it is important to ensure that they are "SMART". This means that they are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time sensitive. If a goal does not include all of these elements it makes it slightly more difficult to achieve because there is some ambiguity involved. SMART goals should most definitely be included in an IPP, so that the student can work towards a specific goal, and as a teacher it will be easy to assess whether of not the goal is being achieved. By now you are probably asking yourself, "how does one go about making a goal or objective measurable?" Well, this is a common question, and the answer is to ensure that the goals include elements of "ACT How". This simply means that the goal includes an action, context, terms, and of course how. So 'action' refers to what you are going to have the student do, 'context' refers to when and where the student will perform the action, 'terms' are the criteria for the successful achievement of the goal, and finally 'how' suggests the type of assessment tool that will be used to ensure this goal is being met. An example of a goal that meets the "ACT How" requirements is as follows; "By November 30th, student will be able to correctly cursive write the alphabet in her Language Arts journal during class time by her self and achieve an accuracy of 100%.

Unfortunately my entry has already come to end, however I hope that you are more confident now when it comes time to create goals, and essentially implement them in your future IPPs.

The Use of Accomodations

Hello Again,

So quite awhile ago, before my observation week for my upcoming IPT, and even before our midterm we discussed the implementation of accommodations. Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to blog about it yet, hence why it's a little late. My apologies.

Firstly, it is important to note that an accommodation is defined as a change or alteration in the regular way a student is expected to learn, complete assignments or participate in the classroom. It is NOT a modification, because the curriculum is not being changed at all and the student is still learning the same curriculum as the rest of the class, but in a different, more suitable way. There are three types of accommodations, they are: environmental, instructional, and assessment. Environmental accommodations are the things we do to the physical space of the classroom or the implementation of adaptive devices. This could include changes such as giving the student a different chair to sit in at their desk, or if they have poor vision, you let them have a laptop on their desk to view everything you write on the board up close. Instructional accommodations are the kinds of activities you do, so this means you might have someone take notes for the student because it may take them longer to process the information if they were to write it themselves. As a teacher, you may also adjust the readings for the student, meaning you could assign them simpler/less readings but ensuring that they are still meeting the curriculum requirements. Lastly, assessment accommodations occur when you let a student write an exam in a quiet place away from other students, and possibly implement an oral examination for the student or simply increase the time available for the student to write the exam. All three of these accommodations are crucial to consider when working with a students who have disabilities because it may be the most simple adjustment that makes their day at school that much more possible for them. I think it's important that teachers understand the importance of giving the student an opportunity to succeed at the same level of his or her peers and learning the same information. As soon as you "think less" of a child, they will essentially behave in the manner. If you create high expectations for a child, they will work harder to impress you! As I have stated in a previous blog entry before, Rick Lavoie taught me that fairness is providing students with what they NEED, not what everyone else in the class receives. This makes complete sense, because how is it fair to treat a student the same as the rest of your class, who IS NOT the same, and requires extra assistance to succeed. As a teacher, it is your responsibility to ensure that all your students have an opportunity to be successful, and implementing classroom accommodations is a great starting point. However, there are five barriers that are frequently encountered when incorporating these accommodations in you classroom. Firstly, the misunderstanding of purpose which means that accommodations should not provide that student with an advantage over his or her peers, they are only reasonable changes to help the student succeed... not to give the student an "easy A". Secondly, teachers sometimes tend to select accommodations that are not appropriate for the student. It is important to make sure that the accommodations selected for the student are authentically aligned with their areas of strengths and needs. Thirdly, teachers sometimes do not include the student in the accommodation decision making. It is crucial that students are involved with these decisions so that they become more aware of what helps them to learn and what does not. Fourthly, teachers tend to use accommodations inconsistently, since the student and all other teachers should essentially be able to access the accommodation at all times. And finally, the overuse of accommodations which means that teachers sometimes use them so much that they begin to water down the curriculum, which leads to a modification instead. Keeping all of these barriers in mind, it is easy to understand how easily an accommodation can turn into a modification, and how this can actually harm the students learning rather than benefit it. So, there are three strategies that can be use to support the effective use of accommodations. These include; basing the decisions of the accommodations on the individual's strengths and needs, using a collaborative process with both the students and parents, and using the accommodations consistently and not just in your classroom. If a teacher keeps all three of these strategies in mind, then the accommodation will definitely continue to benefit the student. The funny thing is... the implementation of accommodations seems so easy, but I think that is the major problem with teachers today, they implement these accommodations incorrectly, and once something is done in the the wrong way, it is almost impossible to fix it.

Next we discussed strategy instruction in the classroom. It is the most common kind of intervention used, because it essentially teaches the students strategies to help them learn, and will eventually lead them to coming up with their own strategies that support their learning in the best way. Simply stated, strategies are things that students do to be successful. There are two basic goals of strategies in your classroom. These are, getting the student active in the learning process, and getting the student to working towards meta cognition (self awareness of ones own thinking). It is important that students make the strategy their own, because once they experience success with a strategy, they will continue to use it. This idea reminds me of the success cycles that we discussed in my introduction to education classes last year. When a student starts to be successful with something, they will obviously enjoy that feeling, and continually do whatever they did to become successful in the first place. One strategy that we discussed was the SQ4R which is a reading comprehension strategy that is commonly used by students. It stands for survey, question, read, recite, relate, and review. The reason this strategy works so well with students is because they are implementing pre-reading, reading and post-reading techniques to ensure they properly understand the reading and what is being asked.

To end this class, we finished watching the Rick Lavoie movie. This part of the movie talked about kids with learning disabilities and how they don't understand social obligations or contacts, or simple social cues. We take this skill for granted because it is second nature to us (us, referring to those who live without learning disabilities). For example, we know that it is rude to talk during a presentation, or to budge in front of other people in a line up, but kids with learning disabilities do not understand this... and become angry and upset when you become angry towards them for not following the "rules". I think this is something that everyone in our society needs to know because many people judge those people who do not follow the basic social contracts of our society. These people are looked at as being bad, selfish, or uncooperative... but they really just don't know or understand why society is ran in the way it is. Lavoie also states that kids with disabilities face two limits, these are connectic melodies, and para-linguistics. Connetic melodies refers to the fact that we have done things so many times that they have become second nature to us, but this is not the case for kids with disabilities, each time they do something that have to actually take the time to think about what they are doing in a chronological order. Para-linguistcs refers to the idea of not being able to understand how body language can change the message. This means that kids with disabilities cannot tell when you are being sarcastic, because they are unable to connect your actions with your words. This is why you should never be sarcastic with these kids, because it will do more harm than good.

Anyways, I think it is about time to conclude my blog entry. I hope you enjoyed and understand more about the usage of accommodations and learning strategies in your classroom. Thanks Again!

It's Been A While!

Hi There,

Sorry it has been quite awhile since my last post on my blog. I have been quite busy with my observation week for my upcoming Introductory Professional Term beginning November 15th. It was very exciting be in the school, and although I am not able to really talk about anything that specifically happened due to FOIP issues, I just wanted to comment on the fact that I was able to witness almost everything we have already discussed in the class in just 4 days. I found it very cool to apply what we have been learning and view it in the real world. It made me realize how important classes such as this one is, and actually inspired me to become more confident in working with kids with disabilities so I will be more competent and confident in the future.

Thank You.

The IPP Process Continued

Welcome Back!

In this blog entry I am going to finish the discussion the I started the other day about the creation of an Individualized Program Plan. It is important to understand that when a IPP is created, it's not something that is created in a couple hours. In fact it actually takes several weeks, maybe even months to properly prepare one in which the student will be most benefited by the program you and your team have created. In yesterday's class we began to discuss the usage of basic classroom assessment techniques in this process, and I feel it is an essential topic to discuss.

Firstly, it is important to note that assessment tools are more so research instruments than anything else. They are tools that help teachers discover how well their students have learned the material over the year, and what changes the teacher could make and benefit from. One example of a simple assessment tool that a teacher could use to evaluate a student's social skills is the "Getting Along With Others Inventory", which is a tool that we actually had the opportunity to complete in class. It essentially generates data for teachers about how a child thinks about their social skills and compares it to their actual social skills that are observed by the teacher on a daily basis. This inventory acts as a self reflection for the student, which is also known as "Assessment as Learning". If you recall, there are three different forms of assessment, the other two are "Assessment for Learning"(on going assessment) and "Assessment of Learning" (a cumulative exam). You may now be asking yourself why teachers feel it is necessary to collect classroom assessments rather than just relying on the specialized assessment data that is collected by a psychologist for the creation of the IPP. Well, teachers feel it is necessary to collect supplementary information because it helps to confirm that the IPP team has indeed created a successful program for the student to follow. Another reason is that the specialized data may simply be out of date, and does not really look at how the student functions within the classroom. For instance, the student may be much more successful at writing an exam during class time rather than in the presence of a psychologist. No, I am not saying that this is usually the case, in fact it is very rarely the case - but it is however important to reflect upon the assessment strategies used and ensure that they are representing the student in the best possible way. One assessment strategy that is most commonly used in this situation is classroom observation. This way, it is possible to see how the student interacts with the other students and classroom material on a daily basis. It is however important to note that a classroom observation doesn't just occur over a few days, it should actually be conducted over several months, of even an entire school year if possible. This way, you be as objective as possible, and be confident when determining the student's barriers to learning, as well as any strengths that the student may demonstrate throughout the year. It is almost important to use ecological assessment when observing the student because it gather information across environments to check for environmental influences. For example, there may very well be another kid that is setting "your" particular student off and causing him to act out in class, and be very unproductive in managing class time. If this is the case, it is very simple to remove that student from that particular environment and assess how he does away from that student, or classroom. Now there are four types of methods that are used for observational methods, these include anecdotal records, event recording, duration reporting, and rating scales. Anecdotal records are when the student does something, either good or bad, you write it down. For example, "Sally got out of her desk after I told her to stay seated in her desk, and sat on the ground and then looked at me for my reaction". Next, event recording is when you are focused on a particular behaviour that the student exerts, so every time he/she displays that particular behaviour you will put a check mark next to it, in essentially a chart format. For example, Amanda Wright from our EDPY class gave a funny example from when she was an EA back in the day, and she was working with one student who had a problem with picking her nose. So every time she picked her nose, Amanda would have to put a check mark next to that behaviour. Next, duration reporting is when you record how long a behaviour happened for. So, back to Amanda's example, she would put a check mark and then write how long the little girl picked her nose for. (Oh wow, what a funny situation!) Finally, the use of a rating scale looks at the extent to which the behaviour is occurring and how bad it is. My personal example of this is from when I was volunteering at Mattie McCullough School last year (still a volunteer there presently) and there was a grade 5 student with aspergers disorder. His teacher would record his behaviour every 15 minutes, and then record how badly the behaviour was occurring and rate it in comparison to previous episodes from the day so far. Overall, when observing any type of behaviour is important to ask yourself, how often does it happen, is it random or is there a pattern, and is the behaviour intense enough to interfere with the learning tasks at hand.

To conclude, I think it is important to understand how important other types of classroom assessment really are in the creation of an IPP because it will help to create a program that is most helpful for the student. I also think it is important to observe the student in many different ways, over a long period of time, so that your IPP team is not creating an entire program centered around one random behaviour, that may or may not be displayed again.

Thanks Again.