Week 11: March 21-25

I really appreciate the layout and organization that we had this week, it was intriguing and different. To start everything off, we learned about the various different types of assessments-specifically informal and formal assessments. On a scale on the whiteboard, we classified countless different types of assessments ranging from each of these two main classifications of test types. It was interesting to see which assessments we placed in the dead center of the scale, especially those that we as educators can make informal or formal, depending on which type of assessment would be more effective and beneficial for our students. The assessments that we placed in the middle were:

• Progress Reports
• Portfolios
• Self-evaluation
• Formative 

Of course, there are both strengths and weaknesses for each assessment. The most important thing to do is analyze the type of students are in your classroom, including: age, grade level, ability level, and learning disabilities present. Synthesizing all this data about the students is how teachers can determine which type of assessment is the most effective and productive.  

The group project that was presented taught us about Emotional Disturbance. It was fascinating to think of what a large umbrella this topic truly is, because it has so many different directions and topics. I appreciated learning more especially about depression and anxiety, because it runs in both sides of my family and I've always wanted to learn and understand more.

As a group, we were assigned to each create a rubric, then compile all of our efforts to a handout and powerpoint slide. I specifically created the rubric requirements for a Summary of Each Unit. I created standards that students had to reach for a score of 5, 3, and 1. Surprisingly, I noticed that it was more difficult than I thought to create specific statements of each achievement in order to know what score to give each student to avoid grading with a bias or strong opinion. 

VISUAL IMPAIRMENT GROUP REFLECTION

1. I feel like our lesson delivery went well because as a group we established goals and objectives, then individually planned our portion to meet those expectations. For my specific part, I think teaching about a real-life classroom situation was very effective because it allowed our peers to actually apply what the other stations discussed and put it to the test. I chose to design my station like this because a classroom simulation is the most helpful and useful for me to solidify the information that has been conveyed by my peers. I think teaching everyone about things to do and to avoid in a classroom environment is very effective because they will know how to assist students that are suffering with Visual Impairments.

2. The evidence I saw of effective student engagement, while I was delivering my lesson was when students were making comments about the things I did wrong during my purposefully bad model example of teaching. Through the things that they pointed out, I was able to identify that they were understanding what NOT to do. When we reversed roles and I had the students in each group come together as a collaborative group, they were very effective with re-designing the classroom to make it easier for students with visual impairments to learn in a formal classroom situation. Each student in every group was very engaged in how they could work together in order to help students that have visual impairments.

3. If I was teaching this same subject independently and not affiliated with a group, I honestly wouldn't change very much at all because I thought we did a wonderful job of teaching the many different aspects of visual impairments and made it virtually as interactive and hands-on as possible. For me personally, this is how I learn best and we decided as a group that we would teach the most important aspects about this disability and teach in a very realistic and effective way that would help everyone in our class know how to best help students with visual impairments in their future classroom environment.

4. There were several areas of improvement in my teaching, specifically:
-Writing an agenda on the white board so people could remember what came next
-Giving clearer directions
-Having a black white board marker ready to use
-Printing out and laminating specific instruction in a LARGE font to have as an example of what we can use to display curriculum information for our visually impaired students.

5. I would give our group the score of 10 because we first met as a group several weeks prior to when we had to present in order to assign everyone different parts of our project and what we wanted to accomplish. We collaborated very effectively because we communicated our mutual goals and made it happen!! I would also give myself a 10 because I adequately completed my portion of our group assignment and did my absolute best to provide our peers a valuable classroom simulation of what it would be like to have students that are suffering from visual impairments in their individual classrooms.

Week 10: March 14-18

We watched a "Fat City" video, which stands for Frustration Anxiety where a group of adults in the public educational setting felt what it would be like to have a learning disability. It was interesting to see the common things that we as adults do that are completely contrary to what would be helpful and effective in that situation. For example, when a teacher or parent is very frustrated at a child and reprimanding them for their misbehavior-the adults tend to demand that the children look at them, however that's the complete opposite of what they want to do in that situation. 

On Wednesday, we learned about:

-self-advocacy

-self-determination

-self-instruction

-self-monitoring

-self-questioning

We discussed the basic steps that are effective pattern of teaching:

1. Assess
2. Teach expectations
3. Demonstrate/model
4. Practice with them
5. Practice independently 
6. Assess 

Friday was my group presentation of Visual Impairments. The station I taught was a classroom simulation in which I gave a really horrible bad example in which my peers pointed out what was wrong and points to improve. Next, we switched roles and I had the group of students in my station come together as a collaborative team and make decisions about how to set up the classroom and teach ins such a way that would be more conducive to students with visual impairments. 

Week 9: March 7-11

This week we learned all about Differentiated Instruction in the classroom. Basically what this includes is meeting students' diverse needs by differentiating the content being taught, the process by which it is taught, and the ways students demonstrate what they have learned through products. There are several ways that we as teachers can use this instructional strategy in the classroom, namely through an instructional process, teaching subject-area content, and basic skills instruction.

To apply what we read previously in our preparation assignment, we broke into groups on Monday and figured out a specific skill that we were able to teach to another group-specifically teaching through differentiated instruction. After realizing what we would teach to our peers, we first gave them a pre-assessment which we used to learn what everyone in the group already knew about the subject we wanted to teach. My group decided to teach about how to do different hairstyles with various types of braids. Each person on my team had a specific braid that they were designated to teach and we were prepared to demonstrate. For our pre-assessment, we had each person in the other group that we were teaching do a self-evaluating on how well they could do the following braids: dutch, french, bangs into a side french braid, fish tail, and an up-do. Through the pre-assessment we knew the strengths and weaknesses of each person and which braid they were most proficient at doing. Roles switched and the group then gave us a similar self-evaluation about how well we could decorate cakes.

The following class period on Wednesday, we were taught by the other group how to do a specific cupcake design for the Easter holiday. They also used a powerpoint presentation to educate us on the various tools and instruments that bakers use for professional cake decorating. We each had a turn at doing the various steps and they were able to do a visual post-assessment of the skills that we learned. Afterwards, we had the opportunity of teaching them all about braids. We differentiated the way that we taught because it was obvious that some of the girls were much more skilled and confident in their abilities to braid, while the classic french braid was more of a challenge for others.

On Friday, we learned all about the different types of Intellectual Disabilities (Mental Retardation). As future educators, we focused on how we could help these students and focus on their strengths rather than their weaknesses. It was interesting learning about the different ways we could help them reach their academic goals and succeed in the classroom setting, even with this cognitive impairment.

Week 8: Feb 29-March 4

This week we focused about students that have special needs other than disabilities. In lecture, we talked about the differences between a 504 plan and an IEP through IDEA. This concept always confused me from when we first started learning about this at the beginning of the semester so it was very helpful to finally distinguish between everything and connecting all the dots. We also touched briefly on the rules with cyber bullying and harassment.When teachers are told or see first-hand students that are dealing with any kind of abuse: emotional, mental, or physical they are required by law to report it to the school psychologist and they take it further with the School Resource Officer. WE as teachers cannot be in trouble with reporting this as long as we are documenting EVERYTHING and are told first-hand, rather than by another student.

In lecture, we also explained the differences between UDL and UDA. Universal Design for Learning is preparing the curriculum before knowing the students. For example, building in advance ramps and other wheelchair accessible tools that is accessible to all, rather than having to change the building later.  Universal Design for Assessment is creating assessments that are available to all, focusing on what the target skill is and what the access skill is.

Regarding children's health, it has been proven that stimulation and extra nutrition is crucial for students to succeed. In addition, protective relationships and guidance helps students have greater resilience to challenges that always come in life.

The group presentation was about traumatic brain injury and orthopedic impairments. Typically, traumatic brain injuries are a result of an injury. There are 2 types of injuries: closed head and open head injuries. We talked about primary damage and secondary damage. Moral of the story with Spina bifita-take prenatals with Folic Acid BEFORE getting pregnant in order to avoid this growth on the spine or other location on the body.