eJournal 5

I am fairly certain I have never had to list all of the instructional strategies I use in any given day.  This leads me to question if it is normal to plan for so many in a 2.5 hour class.  I find that most of my strategies overlap, so the list seems less excessive.  However, I still tilt my head at the length of the list.  So, here it is:

Intro:
Comparing similarities and differences (differentiation in general ed and special ed)
Connect to prior knowledge/learning (IDEA)

Hook:
Giving students examples (my classroom videos)
Use of media/videos (my classroom videos)

To best explain these needs in our classrooms:
Addressing student learning styles
Considering Multiple Intelligence
Differentiating Instruction

The rest of the time:
Active Participation
Checking for understanding
Cooperative Learning
Demonstration
Direct Instruction
Feedback to student
Formative Assessment
Guided Practice
Lecture/presentations
Nonlinguistic representations
Note taking by students
Use of technology
Use of visuals
Whole group instruction

Ending:
Summary/Closure

I am worried that since I have never presented to adults for this length of time (I have given a behavior presentation each year, for the past 4 years, during professional development to my school for about an hour.) I am overestimating the amount of information I can cover.  I do know that in any given 2.5 hour time, with 11 students (each with different goals and objectives) I probably use at least this many strategies, but don't know how that will relate to an adult presentation.

1) motivation: how will you engage and motivate your learners to learn?

I plan to use personal stories, videos of my classroom (yes, I will have parent permission), data showing the jumps in academics I have seen in testing, and videos of my students over time (I record students performing objectives prior to each ARD for their parents and have many students over years.).

2) prerequisite and subskills: what is that they will learn and in what order?

What differentiation looks like from an goals/objectives standpoint, in small groups, in large groups, and individually.

3) practice and feedback: how will you know that they have learned it? and how will you let learners know whether they’ve learned?

I will ask questions and receive feedback in real time (although only by percentage), I will have an open, real-time question/answer board that I can answer during breaks and small group time.  I will monitor small group work and answer individual questions.  I will provide take away materials to support the use of the instruction.

eJournal 4

I write a great deal of goals and objectives for my students, but I have never written goals and objectives for adult learners, or for a presentation that lasts for only a few hours.  I am not sure I am 100% happy with these yet, but here they are:

Following active participation during presentation, 80% of learners will be able to describe and define differentiated instruction in life skills classrooms and demonstrate that knowledge by:

• providing the three important variables (what the student knows, what the student needs to know, and how the student learns best).    
• identifying the characteristics of the three basic learning styles by determining the learning styles of the people in their group.

Following active participation during presentation, 80% of learners will be able to demonstrate steps necessary to successfully plan differentiated instruction in life skills classrooms by:

• accessing free assessment products online that could be used for summative assessment  OR identifying the summative assessment tool they currently use.
• demonstrating an understanding of the connection between summative assessment and goals/objectives by successfully creating at least one objective from a (provided) completed assessment.
• demonstrating an understanding of needs of students based on learning styles by correctly identifying the best types of activities for each learning style.

                                                                                     
Following active participation during presentation, 80% of learners will be able to demonstrate steps necessary to successfully differentiated instruction in life skills classrooms by:

• creating a whole group differentiated lesson using a provided lesson plan and provided student profiles.
• creating a small group differentiated lesson using a provided lesson plan and provided student profiles.

eJournal 3

I thought after days of researching (and many, many articles printed) that I had learned nothing at all.  I will say I have learned a great deal, but nothing about the demographics of teachers in Texas who teach students who spend >60% of the day in special education (PEIMS 44).  With a number of different class names (Life Skills, Life Class, Functional Academics, Adapted Learning Environment, Moving Toward Independence are just a few I know of), it is difficult to search for this class type.  I had the best luck when using the PEIMS value of 44.  I have learned, at this point in time, the Federal Government has allowed states to determine the student:teacher ratio.  I have learned there are many terms for the statistic I am looking for - class size, caseload, workload and pupil-teacher ratio.  I have learned that Texas has decided to leave this ratio up to districts.  I have learned Region Service Centers across Texas have attempted to help determine a maximum value for special education classes, based on a number of values, including the PEIMS values of the students.  I have learned this is a recommendation, and not a binding value.  I have learned the fact that the state allows districts to determine the class size of students with a high percentage of time spent in special ed, districts do not have to report the value.  So, basically, other than what I have seen, I am unable to truly determine class sizes are getting larger.

Additionally, because all special education teachers are created equal (at least in terms of demographics in Texas), I am not able to gather accurate demographic data concerning age, number of years of experience, number of years in special education, or gender.  I am not 100% sure where to go from here.  If you have ideas, I will run with them.    

ETEC 578 eJournal 2

A simple Google search leads to many articles and papers which talk about increased student:teacher ratio which has occurred over the last several years.  These papers refer to the increase in general, bilingual and special education.  I have searched extensively for student to teacher ratios in special education, but in reality, even if I could locate the information, it would not be specific enough.  I would like to know the student:teacher ratio of only low-incidence population classrooms.  I know, from talking to other teachers who teach these students, that our populations have grown.  Even 5 years ago, it was rare to hear about classes with 10 students in them and now many are.  My current class has 11 students.  We appear, at meetings to be a tired bunch.

Since the instruction I would like to design would be for specialty training situations, specifically the Life Skills Boot Camp for Region 10  I feel the teachers who sign up to attend the training, during the summer, would be more open to ideas than groups of these teachers at the district level.  I also understand that as a group, we have a lot on our plates.  I think the extent of material being transferred to other settings is my major concern.  The reason that I want to design this instruction is to better the education quality of the students, so if I fail to design the instruction so that it is not transferred back to the classroom, the design is flawed.  I have considered this and feel my instruction will need to include examples of how to find materials to add to the student helping books, via internet searches, an extensive list of sources of specific materials that can be added, and a number of printed (take it and copy it to your heart's content) pages of common, useful pages that students might need.  I feel my best chance of convincing other teachers to try this method in their classroom is basically to turn it into a make and take.  

Other ideas I have considered for this design that I feel would be effective is video of students using their books, video of parents talking about the pride they feel at their child's independence, and data showing growth over a year when students have used this method.  I understand that my delivery will have to be passionate, but honestly, I think I have that part covered.  :)  

I hope these were the types of things you were looking for as far as learning context for today.  

578: eJournal 1

I intend to design a professional development course to give special education teachers (especially those who teach low-incidence disabilities) the knowledge to implement a classroom program that gives students the tools to help themselves.

Although I am not certain the course has never been designed before, the practice of students' with significant disabilities helping themselves is not widely practiced.  In the past, lower student populations allowed for teachers to provide more individual support (whether this is for the best of the student I will gladly debate at another time).  The increase of student:teacher ratios in special education has created a greater need (and, perhaps, a reason for teachers to listen to an alternative idea) for students to help themselves.

The increased student:teacher ratio in special education is also causing increased student:teacher ratio in general and bilingual education classes.  The culprit is decreased funding.

The majority of decreased educational funding can be linked to the recession of 2007-2009.  As the economy declined, many districts suffered.  Locally, many home foreclosures caused a decrease in home values which resulted in less property taxes being collected by school districts.  According to a February, 2014 article from disabilityScoop, this decrease in local funding is not the only problem.  The article states that the original 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (often referred to as IDEA), Congress committed to funding 40% of the cost of special education but has never paid more than 18.5 percent.

I think the 5 Whys technique led me down an interesting, but perhaps irrelevant path.  I do not feel this is a flaw in the process, but perhaps my answer to the second why.  While increased student sizes have resulted in teachers need for an alternate method, I think the answer could also have been teachers of students with significant disabilities should work to teach independence and self-reliance, which will serve these students for the rest of their lives.  This may have changed the path to a more relevant outcome.

Tech Play 4

I will explore the information literacy option because I was concerned about some of the responses I saw from educated people concerning this subject in the reading discussion 5 from this course.  The most concerning response I saw was about teachers teaching students how to find the “correct” answers on the internet.   It led me to worry about the skills that have been given to teachers to show students how to disseminate the vast amounts of information on the internet. 

I have attempted to find the most basic (elementary level) resources to support learning information literacy skills.  My first search was on Boolean logic.  I am familiar with Boolean because of my software engineering background and worry about the ability of most people to use Boolean logic to search in Google or other search engines.  I appreciated the Boolean Machine by Rockwell Schrock. (http://rockwellschrock.com/rbs3k/boolean/index.htm)  It uses the familiar Venn Diagram and an interactive presentation to explain Boolean logic.  I think this along with some teacher provided topics with student-led Boolean logic would help students to understand the concepts.

The second tool I likes was from Berkeley, Googling to the Max – Exercises,

Getting the most from: http://www.google.com

(http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Googling_Max-Exercises.pdf).  Although this is not specifically for students, I think it is important for teachers to understand the concepts taught here so that they can best guide their students. 

The next tool that I appreciated is Kathy Schrock’s FIVE W’S OF WEB SITE EVALUATION (http://www.schrockguide.net/uploads/3/9/2/2/392267/5ws.pdf).  This is a PDF that uses the familiar 5 Ws (who, what, when, where and why) to help students with determining the accuracy of a website. 

The last tool that I thought was worth considering is Kidport (http://www.kidport.com/Contents.htm) which is a website which limits the possible sources of information.  While I kind of disagree with the concept, I have to compare it to the firewalls which exist in most school districts (although more extreme).  Without extensive amounts of time to judge the validity and comprehensiveness of the sources included, I include this source with caution. 

Because my focus is on the earliest elementary level students, I have focused on the most concrete areas: Research and Library Skills and Critical Literacy.  I feel that Media Literacy can be developed within the scope of learning these other skills and Information Ethics, while at its highest level should be discussed, can be further developed at a later age.  

Creativity Tools

Since I am lucky to be in a district that chose to provide iPads to all teachers this year, I was lucky enough to be able to look at a number of tools.  Looking through the apps did not only give me new tools to use with my students, but made me consider better ways to use the tools I have.

I downloaded several of the evaluating level apps from GloballyConnectedLearning.com and with the exception of Skype, I had not previously heard of any.  I particularly liked Science 360 due to the fact that it was a video based program (since many of my students struggle with reading) and the fact that it was easy to use.   You can scroll through pages of video screen shots and click on any one that interests you.  Compared to the other options in evaluating (several newspaper type programs with a great amount of reading) Science 360 could be quite useful for my students.  Another program that I liked is ShowMe.  I love the fact that in addition to drawing, this app allows for voice recording.  For some students with difficulty in reading and writing, drawing and dictating are great options until the reading and writing skills can be caught up.  This is definitely an app my students could use.

I have a few students who, either due to learning differences or physical abilities, have much better vocal communication skills than reading and handwriting skills.  I typically write objectives for these students to improve reading and handwriting skills while continuing to push creative writing.  The way that I typically do this is to have students dictate their writing to a teacher.  This program could allow for students to independently draw and dictate their thoughts which could be written out for them later.  I think this would create student interest, which fits nicely with my behaviorist teaching approach and allow students to use technology while increasing their independence.  I think science could be another great way to use this program.  Students could take pictures of science experiment outcomes and verbally give their observations.

I think that some of the creative programs, like the puppet and cartoon programs could be great for my students.  I often use student interests to increase their willingness to do work that they do not desire to do.  Writing dialogue for characters that they know and love and doing it in video might prove to be really valuable to me.  Rote memorization is fairly easy for students with Autism to do, while creative writing is extremely difficult.  These tools could really help my students.  I am stoked to introduce them to these programs this week!